Taking Back the Crown

by JCMorrigan

Mozenrath. Archibald Snatcher. Roman Torchwick. Mad Madam Mim. Yzma. The Huntsman. Wuya. Ayam Aghoul. Their mission: take over the multiverse, or look fabulous trying. Rated M for swearing, steamy implications and VERY bloody battles. Contains slash and het shipping.

170. Crypt of Failure

A/N: Two songs for this one! "Mark It Up" and "Let the Monster Rise," both from Repo! The Genetic Opera.

...

Even after the scroll call was cut off, Roman and Molly's group waited just a little longer, knowing the consequences if they jumped to conclusions. Snatcher didn't put in an appearance or give any sign that he was returning or even alive.

"Yeah, something bad happened," Roman sighed. "Okay. Next try, we can't afford not to get to the top of the thing, and that's why I'm calling in the cavalry."

He withdrew two death bombs from his pocket. "The last two I got. We're about to see a blast from the past."

"What are those?" Velvet asked.

"We call them 'death bombs,'" Roman explained. "Little packets of necromancy that fit in your pocket!"

"You…can return people to life." Velvet gaped. Her brow furrowed; "YOU CAN RETURN PEOPLE TO LIFE AND YOU NEVER TOLD ME? DO YOU KNOW WHAT I WOULD GIVE TO BRING BACK THE ONES WHO FELL BEFORE THEIR TIME?"

Roman instinctively took a step back. "Hurting Hand, babe – "

"You so totally used my minion name for her!" Giovanni chuckled.

"I get it," Roman sighed. "Everybody wants a piece of the necromancy pie. But right now, I need to spend these on two very specific people, and they're the last ones I got. If you hold your horses, and if we get everyone out of this in one piece, then maybe, MAYBE I'll put in an order request for a few extra for you. How many you want? Four, right? You wanna bring back the real versions of your pals?"

Velvet shook her head. "Never. The friends I knew…they lived their lives. I know it was to the fullest. Magilou as the poet Mayvin, Eleanor as a founding influence for the world's reform after the Abbey's dissolution, Rokurou as a traveling warrior, Eizen as the dragon of Rayfalke Spiritcrest…they were lives of trial and tribulation. But they've all earned their rest. The versions of them I know now…to me, they mean the same. They're the closest preservation I could make of all they meant to me in my own memories. They've only ever lived life in my dream, and haven't earned anything at all. My friends may not be 'real,' but my heart recognizes them as the most real thing there is."

"Yeah, okay, nice speech," Roman sighed. "How many, though?"

"There are…two people who died when I could have prevented it," Velvet said. "Two people I've never been able to forgive myself for." She looked to Roman's hand. "If you'd just give me those two right there – "

"Do you have a guarantee that one or the other of these people could get us to the top of this labyrinth from Hell?" Roman asked.

"No," Velvet admitted. "Do you?"

"One of my guys, in fact, has done exactly that before," said Roman. "I'd say that's a pretty good guarantee."

Velvet nodded. "Then you can use them on who you want. But unless you share the secret of that magic with the Heathens, I'll hold it against you for the rest of our lives that you kept it secret from me."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll round you up a couple extras," Roman sighed. He knew where he could slip off to in order to easily pick up another pair. "But right now, I don't like the way you're eyeing our deus ex machina, so I'm just gonna WOOP!"

He tossed both death bombs into the central pool of the temple, just in case Velvet decided to get grabby. There was a brilliant flash of light; two figures materialized.

"Oh, HELL no," Rose said when she realized who she was looking at.

One woman. She was tall, statuesque, garbed in a blue military uniform with a jacket that bore an enormous train. Her magenta hair was bound into a spiraling ponytail, bangs drooping over one eye.

One man. Pale as snow, with red markings on his cheeks. His hair was absolutely voluminous, his own ponytail seeming to take up half his body. His stance was slightly bent at the legs and waist, complementing his angular face. He wore a dark tunic and breeches, and when he smiled, one could see his pointed fangs.

Both of them flinched when they realized they weren't dead anymore. "Well, this is certainly interesting," said the man. His gaze alit on Rose. "Ohhhh, this is a nice surprise! Brought me back for more punishment? I bet you think it'll be you who's doing the punishing!"

"Screw you, Lunarre," Rose spat. "This is business, okay? I don't wanna work with you any more than you wanna work with me."

"Business, you say?" The woman tossed her ponytail. "Now, what kind of business would require a former right-hand to the Shepherd to resurrect a pair of Hellions? I would call that treason."

"I didn't ask for you two," Rose spat. "If I'd known it was YOU TWO coming, I would've helped Velvet steal the damn bombs."

"Uh, hi?" Roman waved. "Over here. I'm the guy who summoned you. Me. Ignore the redhead chick."

Lunarre and the woman turned to regard Roman with sour glares. "Who the hell are YOU?" Lunarre spat.

"Roman Torchwick," said Roman. "I'm not from around here. In fact, part of why I came here was specifically for you guys. I mean, I could've brought you back anywhere, but this is where I need your home field advantage. Now, if I got this right, you're Lunarre, and you would be Maltran, a.k.a. the Blue Valkyrie."

"What makes you think we're in the business of being recruited to alliances?" Maltran spat. "You may have resurrected us, but that doesn't make us owe you a debt."

"Yeah, I think you're gonna want to do this once you know the stakes," Roman said. "So, to keep it brief, I'm actually only with the redhead chick because of circumstance. She's MY business associate on this one. As soon as this is wrapped, she gets to fuck right off."

"Why don't I get a cool nickname?" Rose pouted.

"My main enterprise is villainy," Roman went on. "Now, everyone else in this room is into petty crime. That's fine, I guess. John Thicksoup here is making a pretty good career out of it; I gotta give him kudos where they're due. But me? I'm the real deal. Arson, murder, theft, and all the fun stuff! And I happen to have a whole group of people like that waiting in the wings. You two would fit right in!"

Lunarre sniffed haughtily. "If you'd known anything at all, you'd know I'm not interested in working with another team."

"Which I could've told you he'd say if you'd told me you were bringing Lunarre into it," Rose growled. "But it's also bullshit. If Lunarre really hated friendship, he wouldn't still be wearing the Scattered Bones uniform."

"Hardly anything made me sicker than the forced camaraderie of your flock," Lunarre seethed.

"But that's a good question," Roman realized. "Scattered Bones was Rose's old group, right? You were her business partner? And you're still wearing the uniform? That sure says something to me."

"Shut up!" Lunarre snapped.

"Say we did want to take your proposition," Maltran said. "Say, in fact, it's an improvement on our situation in the afterlife…and an improvement on trying to make a new name here, where everyone recognizes the Blue Valkyrie as a traitor to the crown."

"Speak for yourself," Lunarre grumbled. "I own my reputation as a bloodthirsty cannibal and thief, thank you very much."

"You don't have to give me the final answer right away," Roman said. "Right now, what I need is to get to the top of this shrine. Because up there, past all the magic security cameras that have made our lives hell for the past three hours – "

"It hasn't been that long!" Rose groaned.

"There's something that's important to the Shepherd and her idiots," Roman finished, "and also something that's VERY important to me. So you're getting us up there in one shot. You can do that, right? Blue Valkyrie here did it once before."

Maltran nodded. "That I did. But who is this Shepherd you speak of? Someone else has taken the mantle?"

"Uh…hi," Molly squeaked. "It's me. I'm the Shepherd."

After a pause, Lunarre broke into raucous laughter, thowing his whole body back. "A TINY SHEPHERD! Oh, how HILARIOUS! And so disposable – "

Laphicet was immediately in Lunarre's face, burning with white fire. "You touch her," he growled, "and you'll face the entirety of the power of the Empyrean Innominat."

"THE LOST EMPYREAN?" Lunarre kept laughing. "YOU? THE LOST EMPYREAN FROM A CENTURY AGO? DON'T MAKE ME – "

Laphicet slapped Lunarre, and he went flying until he hit the wall across the room.

"…You just might be who you say you are," Lunarre realized as he regained his bearings. He'd sustained a small cut from the impact and tended to it by licking his own blood away.

Maltran rolled her eyes. "Why is he here? I'm the only one you need to get to this precious thing of yours. Though I hope you realize how naïve it makes you sound. Your passion makes you easy to manipulate, and you should take it as a sign of good faith that I'm even telling you as much. How far are you willing to go for what you want?"

"Put a pin in that," Roman told her. "I need both of you because first of all, as I said, my group could benefit from the both of you. Second, because you can't expect me to believe that Lunarre, a hellion who worked as an assassin for years, isn't just as good at this as you are. And third, can you take a stab at WHY we're here in the first place? What's even going on to make all this happen?"

"It's that Heldalf guy," Molly said shakingly. "He's gonna wreck the whole world if we don't get all the Shepherd powers and save the lost seraphs, and this is the last one, and if we can save Mikleo then we can all stop him together!"

"Heldalf?" Maltran repeated with a smirk. "Surely I'm not the one you would call to undermine Heldalf. I was loyal to him to the end."

"The key word here is 'was,'" Roman said. "How'd that end up working out, by the way? You get what you want?"

Maltran was silent.

"What DID you want, anyway?" Roman asked. "I mean, I've seen your file, but I wanna hear it from you, juuuuust in case I have the details wrong."

"Retribution for my pain," Maltran growled. "I served Heldalf with the goal of destroying the world that had caused me to suffer."

"Iiiiiinteresting," Roman replied. "Because last I checked, this world is still here, you died, and you sure didn't get anything back for your pain. And I'm pretty sure Heldalf didn't hurry over to bring you back from the afterlife."

"You don't understand!" Maltran snapped. "I did…I did get what I wanted! I died in service!"

"That's what you WANTED?" Roman retorted. "To take orders from someone your whole life? Isn't that how you ended up in misery in the first place?"

"I was stifled by Hyland," Maltran clarified. "Attacked by my own allies. Forced into a life of extreme scrutiny. I was willing to put up with just a little more."

"Wait," Roman realized, breaking out into a big grin. "Oh, I get it now. What you wanted was the dying part. You died so you could have an end to it all. Well, if you were just suicidal, what was the point of going in on the evil scheme before you went out, huh? You could've just stabbed yourself and been done with it, because if you can't take it with you when it's money, you REALLY can't take it with you when it's revenge."

Maltran glared daggers at him.

"I mean, just based on how it looks from the outside, I think you got more into the revenge thing than you realized," Roman pointed out. "I think you could've found meaning in that if you'd stuck with it. But no, you had to cap it off with dying, and that's fine, so long as being dead was actually, you know, better than this. Was it better than this?"

Maltran continued to glare. She didn't answer. She couldn't.

"Your silence speaks volumes," Roman told her.

"There is another universe beyond this one," Maltran muttered. "Whether or not it lets you rest seems to be determined by the wheel of chance. I died unfulfilled, knowing that Glenwood persisted."

"It's almost like you went about the whole thing wrong," Roman taunted. "Maybe, and this is just a guess, when you bit the dust, you realized all your mistakes. Where you went wrong EXACTLY. You have a new plan now, don't you? One that doesn't involve…" He drew his finger across his neck and made a "Cccckkkk" sound.

"Excuse me!" Lunarre broke in, jogging back up to a reasonable distance from Roman. "Why are you so focused on convincing HER? You brought us both back, didn't you? I'M the only one you need! If anyone resents Heldalf for all he put me through, it's ME! If I wanted to die unfulfilled…I could've just stayed a Scattered Bone."

"Real funny," Rose scoffed.

"They sent HER to bypass the artes that protect this place," Lunarre said haughtily. "Her! It was ME who should've been sent! I would have been able to retrieve the sword of Asura even faster!"

"You can brag all you want," Maltran snorted, "but I think Heldalf knew he had to send someone that wouldn't get distracted slaying and feasting on a nearby village. Knowing you, you would've stopped for lunch in Marlind, devoured the hospitalized plague victims, and taken yourself out of the game with the infection."

"Don't patronize me!" Lunarre snapped. "You think I don't know better than to eat plague victims? You think I don't have enough malevolence in me to COUNTER any plague?"

"So I may need to bring up the last thing that's at stake here," Roman said. "Just so you know – "

"Heldalf selected the correct person for the job," Maltran sniffed. "If this 'Roman' has half a brain, he will make the same selection."

"As though we hadn't just established how flawed Heldalf's judgment was," Lunarre snapped. "He knew I was the best operative in the scheme – he just never bothered to mark it up!"

"If anyone was the best operative to serve Heldalf," Maltran growled, "it was the woman with actual military experience and a mind honed for strategy. That is what he failed to 'mark up.'"

"The thing is – " Roman attempted.

"I ought to devour you right here and now!" Lunarre spat. "Roman doesn't NEED you! You'd be better off as a meal to keep me going. Now, what should I eat first? Your supposedly big brain, or your shriveled heart? Tell me, and I'll mark THAT up!"

"Oh gods," Roman sighed.

Giovanni, now getting invested in the drama, stamped his foot twice before chanting "MARK IT UP!" Stamp, stamp. "MARK IT UP!"

Rose, having reached the end of her rope with Lunarre, joined in, thinking of nothing else she could do but make mockery. "MARK IT UP!" Stamp, stamp. "MARK IT UP!"

Roman had also reached the end of his rope. He inserted himself between Maltran and Lunarre, pushing them to either side. "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS, MORONS?" he yelled.

"I should be in charge, Roman!" Maltran barked.

Roman growled. "I don't take lip from a – "

Maltran had beaten him: "I don't take lip from a SLUT."

Before Roman could formulate a proper comeback – or even process that she'd managed to pick an insult that was fairly correct – Lunarre mumbled in tune: "Maltran should eat Roman up…"

"LUNARRE?" Maltran whirled on him. "SHUT THE HELL UP."

She took two steps back, then began to prance around the atrium. Her voice was definitely in song now. "I'm the smartest! And the toughest! I will find a wound and salt it! If there's not one, I will carve one! The Blue Valkyrie takes shit from no one!" She tapped her forehead. "One brain! Mark it up! Only I have brains enough! That's why he will leave this job to ME!"

Lunarre puffed out his chest. "Ask a seraph who they fear more! Ten out of nine will say it's Lunarre! Bloodlust munching, ribcage crunching!" He licked his lips. "I will leave your arteries dripping! Two hearts, mark it up! Lunarre eats all of the hearts!"

Maltran took one decisive step toward Lunarre. "You don't have the guts, soldier."

Lunarre rolled his eyes over to Roman; "All bark, but no lungs, I told her!"

The two glared at each other, yelling, "HE WILL LEAVE THIS PLAN TO ME!"

Roman at this point just rolled his eyes, threw up his hands, and silently backed off to let them finish.

"You wait!" Lunarre chuckled.

"Time will tell!" Maltran barked.

Lunarre gave a spin; "Lunarre's face will drip with gore when – "

"The Valkyrie's spear will RULE YOU!" Maltran produced a silvery spear, aiming it right at Lunarre.

" – I bite right through all this stuff!" Lunarre continued, ignoring her.

"I'm OUTSMARTING all this stuff," Maltran huffed.

"Take this plan and write you OUT," Lunarre hissed.

"Take my cut," Maltran seethed, "and mark it up."

They stormed toward each other, inches from one another's face: "Mark it up! MARK IT UP!"

Then they paused, shooting each other a silent, dirty glare. After a few moments of quiet, Roman yelled, "ARE WE DONE?"

Maltran and Lunarre's heads snapped toward him. "Make your choice," Maltran barked. "And make it the right one."

"I already have," Roman growled. "I'm taking BOTH of you, whether or not you can actually get the fuck along, because you haven't let me say that THIS IS ABOUT SYMONNE!"

Both flinched. "Symonne?" Maltran repeated, trying to keep her cool. "What of her?"

"So Heldalf's back somehow," Roman groaned. "Still figuring that one out."

Rose shrugged. "Yeah. No clue."

"I had just talked Symonne out of going right back to the kind of abuse he put her through every day," Roman growled. "She was coming home with ME. I was gonna put her on the right track. Well, the right wrong track. Then guess who showed up and strong-armed her away from me and away from all the cool new friends she'd made? Yeah, the big Kittybeard himself. So I've been playing along with this STUPID Shepherd thing – no offense, kid – "

"None taken," Molly sighed. "I expected that kind of thing from you, honestly."

"Then you get how this works," Roman told her. Back to Maltran and Lunarre: "I have gone along with a fucking save-the-world scheme, which is the LAST thing I want my brand name associated with, because I need to get Symonne back. And I know from the way she talked about you two that she thought of you as friends. Maybe even family! You sure argue like siblings! You know that? So if either of you knows for a fact she put her faith in the wrong place, let me know and I'll cut you out of this enterprise immediately. Maybe I DO only need one of you. Or maybe neither of you! I'm only taking as many of you as want to stop her from going through what you all went through last time. So, with that in mind, who's with me?"

For a moment, Maltran and Lunarre were both silent. Then Lunarre sighed; "The girl was eccentric, but very entertaining, and she did understand the fineries of bloodshed. I would hate to give up on a partner in crime so easily."

"That's funny," Rose scoffed. "I thought you were sick of friendship. In fact, I always thought that if you somehow survived me killing you to death, you'd come back to do one last stupid heist with Symonne and then screw off to do your own thing because you just have to be a lone wolf, or a lone fox, or whatever."

Lunarre's eyebrow twitched. "Don't think of this as friendship. It's more like…loyalty." A pause. "And it wouldn't have happened that way. How would you like it if I slandered you by saying, ohhhh, that you'd gotten in a fistfight with the Princess Knight and battered her black and blue?"

"WHY WOULD I DO THAT?" Rose yelled in horror. "Alisha's my friend, idiot! Something YOU won't admit about Symonne!"

"Speaking of the Princess Knight," Maltran grumbled, "it has occurred to me before that Symonne is everything Alisha failed to be. After all the time I spent on that girl…perhaps it's time to cut my losses and move on to the one I know has actually taken my teachings to heart."

"You both like her." Roman grinned mischievously. "You think she's cute! She's like your missing little sibling!"

"Keep slandering me and I'll call it off," Maltran growled. "…But I suppose I could be persuaded to work alongside Lunarre in your syndicate if it meant…that the strategic alliance the three of us created could once again be duplicated. For the sake of logistics."

Lunarre rolled his eyes. "Very well. For the ONE person who could actually laugh along with me when the streets ran red. But any more talk of us thinking of her as some kind of family member and you'll be the next course on the menu!"

"Are we gonna have to deal with your eating-people thing at some point?" Roman asked. He shook his head; "Never mind. Anyway, we're burning daylight, and we not only have a seraph we need to fill out the deck, but also, as I said, someone else very important to me is lost in this temple and probably in a shitload of trouble, so I say we move it. Now."

"Come on, everyone!" Molly pointed to the door of the temple. "Let's go save Mikleo AND Mr. Snatcher!"

As the group moved forward, Maltran huffed, "Working with a Shepherd. I didn't think I would see the day."

"A sly fox knows how to devour a sheep," Lunarre said mischievously.

"Correction," Giovanni broke in, suddenly behind them. "And by the way, teleports behind you. Bear Trap isn't a sheep. She's a little bear cub. And you know what happens when you mess with a bear cub? Papa Bear gets mad."

"Try me," Lunarre scoffed.

"How about I try you instead?" Velvet barked. "Surely the name 'Velvet Crowe' means something to you."

Maltran and Lunarre both halted in their tracks, eyes wide. "Not the original Lord of Calamity…" Maltran breathed, staring at Velvet. "It IS you. Every inch the illustrations in the tomes of history."

Lunarre dropped to his knees. "I had no idea, my lord! If you'd spoken up sooner, I wouldn't have wasted so much time!"

"OH, COME ON!" Roman yelled.

Maltran took a knee. "Your word is my command, Lord of Calamity."

Velvet nodded. "Take us to the top of the temple. NOW. And don't argue. When we're through, you go with Roman, and you don't bother with me unless explicitly summoned. Is that clear?"

"YES, LORD OF CALAMITY!" Maltran and Lunarre leapt to their feet and hurried ahead of the entire group.

"So I could've just let you take the wheel and we could've avoided the whole song and dance," Roman sighed.

"No," Velvet told him. "You got them to remember who was important. That will last them longer than any of my demands. Trust me…even the Lord of Calamity will go to any lengths to save family."

Roman was back to the end of his rope, so he just figured it was better not to say anything at all. Still and all, he decided he was going to take the victory Velvet had handed him and believe that none of this was possible without his guidance. Which wasn't inaccurate.

...

The guards posted at the rear of the Avalor castle were sparse, given that the castle was situated atop a cliff with a sheer drop to the ocean. Still and all, they took their jobs very seriously, watching for any incoming assault by air or by sea. Which was why they immediately turned down the invitation they received to the "Guard Appreciation Banquet."

"Did Queen Shuriki approve of it?" one asked.

"Uh…" Private Higgins, the shortest of the guards, had been the one to deliver the invitation, with chief event planner Armando in tow. "Yes?"

"No," Armando said quickly. He knew no one would believe that. "It was me who thought you all deserved some time and appreciation. A thank-you for all you do for us!"

"So you should come!" Higgins insisted. "There's gonna be cupcakes!"

"I made them myself!" Armando boasted. "Secret family recipe!"

"You're lucky we don't report you to Shuriki for this," the door guard snarled.

"Eh, your loss." Higgins turned, shrugged, and walked away.

After giving a sigh, Armando admitted "I guess it is up to you" and followed after.

A tall and spindly man dressed in an elegant suit awaited the duo just inside the castle. "Well?" Chancellor Esteban urged. "What did they say?"

"No go, unfortunately," Armando sighed.

"But it's not a big deal, right?" Higgins said. "It's not like Elena's gonna use the BACK door. Everyone's gonna come through the front, and plenty of guards from the front decided to come to the party!"

"This is true," Esteban admitted. "And yet there are also those who remained at their post. I would not wish to see Elena come so far after all these years only to fall at the finish line…"

"Um, Chancellor Esteban?" Higgins asked. "Why do you care? Weren't you the one who, you know…"

"We do not speak of that!" Esteban hissed.

"What aren't we speaking of?" Armando asked.

"The fact that Esteban helped sneak Shuriki into the kingdom so she could take over," Higgins said proudly.

Esteban cuffed the private. "You were told that in strict confidence!"

"You really…" Armando trailed off.

"And I have regretted it every day of my life," Esteban sighed, slumping. "I was an angry young man, bitter at the whole world. I had thought the changing of leadership would allow me to reclaim what the world stole from me. I had failed to consider…just how far Shuriki would go. That is why we must succeed in getting Elena onto the grounds to battle her. It is the only way I can make up for my past mistakes!"

"Don't beat yourself up about it," Higgins assured. "I mean, that Victor guy probably pressured you into it, right?"

Esteban paused too long.

"I…guess we'll talk about this when we have nothing to lose," Armando said. "Right now, we need to stick together."

"You will not be able to look at me the same way," Esteban realized.

"I don't know what to think right now," Armando admitted. "Let's just…worry about getting Shuriki out of the way. You won't betray us, will you?"

"Not after I have come this far," Esteban hissed. "Whatever happens, we must assist Elena in getting to the palace gates…and we must reveal to her the truth of the painting in the throne room. That is why I leave the rest to you while I stall Shuriki there. The battle must take place in that room so she may see the secret that has been hidden all these years."

The three departed, meaning they missed the spectacle that came winging the castle's way from behind. Just as well, because Esteban would not have wanted to come face-to-face with one of the unexpected guests ever again.

The first sign of it was when one of the guards at the rear door leaned forward, shielding his eyes from the sun; "Is that a…"

"Magic flying crystal boat?" another said in sheer disbelief.

It was a magic flying crystal boat. Prisma had constructed a small ship out of opalescent stone, with rows of self-propelled oars winging the shimmering rainbow craft ever onward through the sky. Its bow was pointed directly toward the Avalor castle, and standing with one leg heightened on that bow was Victor Delgado. Carla flanked him, her arms crossed sassily. Behind the Delgados, Prisma, Mera, the Lobster Mobster, Indus, and Undertow lined up, leering at the castle guards.

All of whom readied their swords. "It's Delgado," one of them said. "He's come back for revenge!"

"IT IS GOOD TO SEE YOU STILL REMEMBER ME!" Victor yelled. "THAT IS MORE THAN I EXPECTED, TO BE HONEST!" He then turned and gave a nod to Undertow. "I believe that is the first course."

"Oh, yeah, it's about to get MESSY!" Undertow charged forward through the air.

Shuriki's guard had been taught to defend against most civilian matters in case of a revolution. However, they had never once been trained to defend against a giant flying shark. They held their ground as best they could, but in the end, there were bursts of red, and viscera carpeted the ground.

"Ugh." Carla hid her eyes. "Gross."

"And such horrible table manners, too!" Prisma huffed.

Indus politely took two steps to the left, vomited over the side of the boat, and then returned to say "I am okay!"

The boat docked. Not a single guard was left. Undertow chewed bones just to get the rest of the good meat. Victor and Prisma stepped onto the precipice, careful not to step in any of the spilled blood. "Let's go!" Prisma urged.

The entire group charged into the rear entrance, with Victor pointing the way to the royal treasury. Undertow almost couldn't be bothered to leave his meal, but when the Lobster Mobster clicked his claws in the massive shark's face impatiently, Undertow rolled his eyes and followed along – stil chewing on a rib cage.

The guards out front of the castle had no idea of any of this. But they were dealing with their own problems. Their ranks were thinned since so many of them had shirked duty to go attend Armando's appreciation party. If it were a normal day, perhaps that would have been no problem. Usually, guarding the castle was slow business. This day, however, was far from normal.

The sound of singing echoed through the air. Singing, which had been outlawed in Avalor for almost fifty years. Soon the source of the disturbance came into view: Naomi Turner dancing up the road, leading a crowd of hundreds of Avalorans. Jaquins flew overhead in a rainbow of fur colors.

"LET'S PUSH THE EMPRESS INTO THE OCEAN!" Naomi cheered.

"THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE!" the others echoed. "THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE!"

"DON'T NEED A SWORD TO FLIRT WITH DEVOTION!" Naomi belted.

As the crowd surged, the guards drew their weapons. "Cut as many down as necessary," one ordered.

Then they realized who else was in the front lines. There was Mateo, and they may not have recognized him, but they knew an authentic tamborita when they saw one. He was quite obviously the first wizard to wield one in Avalor since Shuriki's takeover. Then there was the one they did recognize: Gabe.

"TRAITOR!" yelled one of the guards.

"I'M the traitor?" Gabe barked. "YOU'RE the ones who've been going along with a fake queen for half a century!"

Mateo scanned the sky; Cacahuate clung to his back. "Where are they?" Mateo wondered aloud.

"Probably dead somewhere in the jungle," Cacahuate sighed. "I knew Takaina was too dangerous for them. I should've – "

"LOOK!" Mateo pointed.

They'd hijacked one of the inexplicable sky trams from Tepet Muul. It had broken free of its cords, barreling through the sky like a comet, burning with an orange aura. Then it crashed down between the guards and the crowd, revealing a very orange Elena at the wheel. Ven, Papyrus, Sofia, Stork, and Rapunzel disembarked; Rapunzel's hair was a shimmering silver, betraying that she was riddled with far more doubt then Elena. When Elena exited the tram last, however, her orange aura informed everyone present that she was very angry.

"No," gasped one of the guards. "That can't be – "

"Oh, it is," Elena seethed. "And now? You're going to pay for what happened to my family AND all the people of Avalor."

One guard charged, blade drawn. Gabe leapt, parrying with his own sword. As the two clashed, Elena threw out a hand toward the offending guard. All of a sudden, a massive gust of wind blew that guard and only him clear off the castle grounds, bowling him head over heels over the lawn.

"Anyone else?" Elena urged.

The rest of the guards drew their blades.

"Fine," Elena said. "And just to rub it in, we're gonna do this WITHOUT killing anyone. You know, like you never did."

Blades clashed. Magic flew. Rapunzel called upon her own self-doubt to mire enemies into massive mud puddles, the way she often felt she herself was hindered by her fear. Stork and Papyrus went on the offensive, beating back warriors with green fists and large bones of magic. Naomi produced a rope, flinging it like a whip and managing to lasso a sword right out of an enemy's hand. Elena threw guards this way and that way – softly enough to cause no damage, but still far enough that they couldn't catch back up to the fight. As Sofia, knowing she couldn't contribute to the fight, stepped back into the crowd, the Avalorans surged forth to help Elena by fighting the military with their bare hands. The guards didn't hold back, hacking and slicing at their own civilians – but Ven was at the ready with Curaga spells for any who were harmed, sealing up wounds and stemming bleeding.

Inside the castle, the treasury vault door was minded by a pair of guards. Both were suddenly alerted to a sharp cry of "Ow!".

One stepped over to find Carla Delgado sitting on the floor, clutching her ankle. "I think I sprained it!" she moaned.

"I haven't seen your face around here," the guard said in suspicion. "You new?"

"Ugh!" Carla groaned. "Don't you recognize the new kitchen maid when you see her?"

The guard leaned down to sneer in her face. "We haven't hired a kitchen maid this young since Shuriki's ascension."

Carla just pointed up. So the guard looked up. Right into Undertow's face. "Last words?" Undertow asked with a grin.

The guard screamed.

"You're gonna go out on THAT note?" Undertow scoffed before taking a big bite.

The other guard hurried forward to help his cohort, only to impale himself on several glass spikes that protruded from the floor. Mera strolled past his bleeding-out body, saying quite haughtily, "They never expect it from me. But I'm always watching. No matter where you think you're safe. I'm like a duck that way."

"Hey, kid," Undertow said through a full mouth, spraying red droplets. "What was the point of the ankle-sprain thing? It didn't actually work."

Carla stood on her two un-sprained ankles. "I wanted to help out with the plan somehow!" she urged.

"Fair, kid," the Lobster Mobster chimed in. "This is a team effort, after all. You're in the Lobster Mobster's mob."

"Glad you got a new kid out of the deal," Undertow grumbled. "You're a big sap."

"And you're a rube with food on your face," the Lobster Mobster countered. "C'mon, Carla. Let's find ourselves some choice shiny things."

The group entered the vault – all but Undertow, who was trying to figure out how to get the second body off Mera's spikes. "Be careful," Victor warned. "The vault is booby-trapped."

Prisma surveyed the room: a rounded, multi-tiered white expanse lined with shelves that contained sparkling gems of all sorts. A ceremonial gown and tiara made up the centerpiece of the display, sitting on the first floor, tempting any would-be robbers to come right up and take it. "How do I want to play this?" Prisma wondered.

"Too bad we don't have, like, some kind of magic anti-booby-trap sword," Mera said. "Since this is like a fairy-tale world and all."

Prisma gasped. "That's a GREAT idea! Mera, you're a genius!"

"I know," Mera replied. "…Now, what'd I say?"

With a "Crystallo!", Prisma suddenly held a sword made of gleaming crystal. "Ta-daaa! One magical anti-booby-trap crystal sword! And actually, since I have the power…CRYSTALLO!"

Indus, Victor, Carla, and Mera gasped. Each one held an identical magical sword.

"HA!" Carla mimed fencing with hers. "Now I'll be unstoppable!"

"I like that you're really unleashing your inner Mary Sue here," Mera said with a grin. "And I mean that in the best way possible. Cringe is dead."

"Who's Mary Sue?" Victor asked, confused. "Another one of your allies?"

Mera shook her head. "Just pretend I didn't say anything."

Indus was the first to set off a trap. Cannons emerged from beneath the tile, shooting colorful projectiles that were meant to stain thieves and mark them as the perpetrators: the level-one defense. Indus swung the sword, and thanks to the magic Prisma had given it, it honed right in on the orbs of purple dye, obliterating them on contact.

Carla saw that as her cue to run into the vault yelling "AAAAAAAA!" and setting off as many dye cannons as possible.

"Why do we even care about the purple stuff?" the Lobster Mobster wondered. "It ain't like we're even tryin' to keep a low profile here."

"True," said Prisma, "but I really don't want to get any on my dress."

"Point taken."

The second level of traps sent heavy sandbags hurling from above. The first one tripped just smacked right into Indus, who didn't even react at first. Then, completely unfazed, he said, "I have been hit by a bag."

"You're supposed to use the sword on them, dummy," Mera sighed, tripping a sandbag and using her own sword to slice it in half and spill a carpet of sand.

Prisma then tripped a line that set off a bell alarm. Everyone froze, listening to the sounds of more footsteps assembling in the hallway.

Which was soon replaced by Undertow's yell of "THANKS FOR DESSERT, GUYS!" and some very disgusting noises.

"That takes care of that!" Prisma laughed.

Finally, they got to the shelves and began to raid. Carla took the central ceremonial tiara, a relic that once belonged to Elena's mother, and fitted it atop her head. "Who's the queen now?"

Victor was on a mission. He pulled open cabinet after cabinet; "No – no – no – no – no – wait, YES!" He seized the violet orb, a perfectly smooth and sleek artifact that required both hands to carry. "The Eye of Midnight! This will be the key to our recruiting Orizaba during the night of the eclipse!"

"You know," Prisma sighed as she rifled through the cabinets, "I'm actually a little disappointed. Ever since Takaina, I can actually make prettier and more powerful jewelry than any of this stuff, so this is really just a letdown." She hurled several necklaces over her shoulder.

"Speak for yourself, toots!" The Lobster Mobster grabbed the fallen pieces and wrapped them around his body to carry them. "I ain't seen this kind of loot since the great pirate shipwreck of the Maelstrom of the Midnight Tide!"

"Hey." Mera tapped Prisma's shoulder.

"Hm?" Prisma looked to her.

Mera seized Prisma's hand and slid a ring onto the appropriate finger: an amethyst bordered by sapphires. "Promise ring," she said.

"It's wonderful!" Prisma gasped. "But I can't just give you something from this cabinet of junk and call it good enough for you. You just happened to find the ONE decent piece to give to me. But for you? Crystallo!"

The ring was so burdened with tourmaline that Mera collapsed, hand-first, to the ground. "Maybe a little smaller rock," Mera coughed.

"Right." Prisma reforged the ring so it was only a reasonable amount of tourmaline that could be lifted by anyone.

Mera stood, admiring the rainbow shimmer Prisma had given her. "Yeah. That's better."

Eventually, the shelves were cleaned out. The Lobster Mobster was decked out to the nines in gold and glitter, to the point where Prisma almost made a joke about him needing a musical number about how shiny he was, but she had the feeling that joke had already been made somewhere. Carla had let Indus try on the tiara, and he enjoyed being Princess Indus for a while, but then he passed it back to Carla because it was more symbolic of her dream. Victor obviously wanted to try on the tiara also but couldn't bring himself to admit it, so he just clung to the Eye of Midnight.

"Well?" Prisma urged. "We're done here. Let's go take care of Shuriki once and for all!"

She led the charge out of the vault. They found Undertow lounging on his back in the hall, belching loudly. "I couldn't eat another bite," he groaned.

"Well, that's for the better," Prisma said. "I want us to take down Shuriki in a way that's a little more hands-on."

However, Shuriki was already engaged. Rapunzel, Stork, Ven, Papyrus, Sofia, Elena, Mateo, Gabe, Naomi, and Cacahuate burst into her audience chamber only to find her sitting very calmly on her diamond throne, giving them a sly smirk.

"Princess Elena," she greeted in a slimy tone. "You've gotten stronger."

Elena aimed the Scepter of Light at her. "I have."

Shuriki slowly rose, and as she did so, Darkness began to pool in her aura, licking off her like flames. "What a coincidence," she said. "So have I."

"WHAT?" Elena screamed. "HOW?"

"She's falling to the Darkness," Ven said. "But I don't get – "

"LOOK!" Sofia pointed. "SHE HAS THE AMULET!"

The jet-black Amulet of Avalor hung around her neck. "Indeed," Shuriki said. "My friend Morgana is giving me a little help from the inside. Probably because she thinks she can earn a way out, but…we'll see about that. It all depends on if she manages to get rid of this nuisance."

"This wasn't part of the plan," Stork said in a shaky tone. "Maybe we need to regroup – "

"After I rounded up a whole entire revolution?" Naomi spat. "No!"

Shuriki advanced, drawing her wand. "Don't be so sad, Elena," she said. "On the bright side…you'll get to see your parents again."

Before she could fire, Elena screamed, "BLAZE!"

Bright orange fire of anger surged from the Scepter of Light. Shuriki countered it with a thick cloud of Darkness, the two streams of magic meeting in the middle. As Shuriki's Darkness pushed back, Elena's flame was certain to be extinguished.

"NO!" Rapunzel jumped in alongside Elena, throwing out both hands. Her purple fear had come back in full force, but that fear was strong indeed, pushing back against the Darkness.

Mateo slid in on Elena's other side, banging the tamborita. "CONTALI!"

Now the two sides of magic were more evenly matched, meeting in the middle, struggling to tip the scales. "Not bad, Princess," Shuriki scoffed. "Too bad you couldn't do all this on your own!"

"I don't need to do this on my own!" Elena snapped. "I'll win because I care about my friends and my people, UNLIKE YOU!"

"You think I don't have friends?" Shuriki laughed. "Watch!"

She snapped her fingers. An army of Neo-Shadows melted into the room, their heads tilting erratically to face their prey.

"I GOT IT!" Gabe charged into the Heartless fray, sword drawn.

"SO DO I!" Naomi threw her lasso.

Stork didn't even need a battle cry, simply tackling the nearest Neo-Shadow. Papyrus threw bones left and right. Ven became a whirlwind with a Keyblade, cutting down several Heartless at once.

Shuriki increased her force, pushing back on the triad of magic that attempted to overcome her. "You're faltering," she teased.

Mateo realized the problem. "How are we gonna win this without…"

"Without destroying her?" Rapunzel finished. "No idea!"

"Maybe we should just…destroy her," Elena suggested. "It's what she deserves."

"Elena, it won't bring your family back!" Mateo argued.

Then, taking advantage of the fray to charge into the room without hindrance, in came Esteban, Armando, and Higgins. "PRINCESS ELENA!" all three yelled, hurrying to a far wall and pulling back a tapestry.

"COUSIN ESTEBAN?" Elena yelled in utter disbelief.

Esteban, Armando, and Higgins lifted a massive painting off the wall, a painting previously hidden by Shuriki's tapestry. It depicted an elderly couple and a little girl who looked only a bit older than Sofia. "Elena!" Esteban huffed as the trio moved the painting behind Shuriki. "Luisa, Francisco, and Isabel! Alacazar sealed them in this painting to protect them! They are still alive!"

"WHAT?" Elena screamed. The orange of her spell was shot through with pink, and Shuriki reeled, trying to absorb the shock.

"YOU LOUSY TRAITOR!" Shuriki yelled over her shoulder.

"Traitor?" Esteban repeated. "Maybe so. But lousy? I don't think this is true."

"Can you do some kind of magic switch?" Higgins asked. "Put her in here and get the others out!"

"Okay, so I was wrong," Mateo said. "I mean, it's not killing her, but if you do THIS, apparently you will get your family back."

"How do I do it?" Elena yelled. "I can only focus on her, not the painting!"

"I could try and cast magic on the painting," Rapunzel said, "but if I take my power away, then – "

"Then you'll LOSE," Shuriki cackled.

Ven saw red. Acting on pure instinct, he rushed to Mateo's other side, yelling "TAKE THIS!" and sending an immense charge of light Shuriki's way. Immediately, when he added his power, Rapunzel was able to step back, breaking her connection to the battle. Ven, it seemed, had the Last Word.

"Could you ALWAYS do that?" Mateo asked, wide-eyed.

"I…I've only ever done this once." Ven recalled when the power had come to him on a stage inside his own heart, when he had faced his former dark side incarnate. "I don't know how long it will last!"

Rapunzel's hair went silver again. She had only one chance to do this, and it needed to be done correctly or all was lost. Esteban, Armando, and Higgins were faltering under the enchanted painting's weight, staggering this way and that way.

"What if I mess it up?" she yelled.

Cacahuate, still clinging to Mateo's back, looked to her. "What if you don't?" he said with a mischievous smile.

"Come on, Rapunzel!" Naomi urged. "You're THE Rapunzel! You got this!"

But what mattered was when Stork turned to look her dead in the eye. "If you miss, then we're doomed either way," he said. "So don't worry, because you have NOTHING TO LOSE!"

He was right. Trying was better than standing stagnant. It was the only choice. Rapunzel twirled her silver hair as a lasso of her own, launching it to the painting. That was all she needed to do, she realized. Just try.

The silver receded. Gold shone through. Then pink. That pink hair took on a life of its own, wrapping around the painting.

Light burst through, and the hair receded. The painting became a portal of gleaming pink. Out stepped the three people depicted – the elderly couple and the little girl.

"ABUELA?" Elena cried. "ABUELO! ISA!"

"ELENA?" the young girl cried in disbelief.

"GET HER INTO THE PAINTING BEFORE THE PORTAL CLOSES!" Sofia yelled.

"We just need a little more strength – " Mateo grunted.

That was when Prisma's team made it to a side hall, almost bursting into the throne room. When they saw the amount of assembled heroes in addition to Shuriki, however, they thought better of entering.

"Rats!" Prisma hissed. "Looks like we'll have to back down for today."

"Oh, don't worry," Victor said with a glare toward one of the painting-bearers. "Now that we have the power of Orizaba…I am more than ready to finally put El Segundo in his place."

"Maybe it ain't time to tango with the do-gooders," the Lobster Mobster pointed out, "but also, it looks like they've just about done our job for us with Shuriki."

"Though it seems they could use a little help," Victor said slyly. "And as much as I hate to collaborate with El Segundo…"

Mera and Prisma smirked at each other. Then, quietly, they put out their hands toward Shuriki.

Shuriki screamed as shards of glass manifested in her shoes, between her feet and the soles, piercing the skin. Crystals grew as a crust on her skin, freezing her joints and keeping her preserved like a statue.

She staggered back. Then fell into the pink light. When it subsided, there was only a painting of Shuriki screaming in agony.

"Did I…do that?" Elena said in disbelief. "I wasn't trying for that, but I guess I did it."

"Okay, guys," Mera hissed. "Now's when we make like a tree and split."

"Actually, it's – " Carla attempted.

"Yeah, I realized what I said when it left my mouth," Mera admitted. "Let's just GO!"

So they did. Except Victor hung behind, and was about ready to barge in on the heroes and start a fistfight with Esteban until Indus doubled back, threw Victor over his shoulder, and brought him along to catch up with the others.

Esteban, Armando, and Higgins finally were able to put down the picture frame, which fell over backward. "That seems like an undignified enough end for her," Mateo said smugly.

The old woman who'd been released from the painting gaped at Elena. "It can't be," she said softly. "I thought you were – "

"Abuela – " Elena rushed to the woman, tears in her eyes, wrapping her in a tight embrace. "I thought you were the one who was gone." She then let go, immediately squeezing her grandfather tight. "I never thought I'd see you again!" Then she let go again, moving onto Isabel, and she gave the little girl the longest hug of all.

"Elena," Isabel sniffled. "I can't believe you're okay."

Elena's grandmother, Luisa, stepped forward to survey the odd squad that had assisted in her escape. "I see you've made a few friends!" she noted.

"Hi – " Rapunzel began.

Naomi slid in front of her; "Recognize her? Do you RECOGNIZE her? It's Rapunzel of Corona! Like from the story! She came here to our world and she beat Shuriki all on her own!"

"I did NOT beat Shuriki all on my own," Rapunzel argued. "I couldn't have done that without any of you." Her hair was a soft pink now. "Just goes to show why we make such a great team!"

She then looked to Stork. "And…thank you," she said. "I don't think I…" She shook her head. "Never mind."

Stork just gave her a cheeky salute, a click of the tongue.

"Right back atcha," Rapunzel told him.

"Well, looks like the kingdom's saved!" Gabe said as he sheathed his sword. "No Shuriki, no problem!"

"Uh, yes problem!" Naomi said with a stamp of her foot. "There's still those other weirdos that showed up at the Crown of Aziluna. And what about all the Shuriki loyalists in the guard? Oh, and I hope no one forgot about the problem with the Mystic Isles!"

"The Mystic Isles of legend?" Francisco said in disbelief. "They're real?"

"Francisco!" Luisa chided. "We just spent fifty years in a magic painting! I think we have to start believing in a little more magic!"

Ven nodded. "One of our enemies took it over. We have to stop her. We actually came here to look for help…but it was you guys who needed help instead."

"That's right," Sofia realized. "The Which-Way Bow said the amulet would help. But now the amulet's trapped with Shuriki…"

"I'm starting to think it wasn't the amulet," said Elena. "I think it was pointing to me. What if I'm supposed to go with you to the Mystic Isles? Maybe I can stop the person who took over there, too!"

"BUT YOU ONLY JUST REGAINED YOUR THRONE HERE!" Papyrus argued. "YOU HAVE A LOT TO DO!"

"That's right," Elena said. "I wish I could help, though…if only I could be in two places at once."

Francisco put a hand on Elena's shoulder. "You do not have to do this alone, Elena," he said. "If there are others who need your help…we can handle things here until your return. But you must come back to us safely."

"We'll need a royal council for the interim," Luisa mused. "I would say about four people."

"Well, Naomi, Mateo, and I are three people!" Gabe said.

"Did you just volunteer me for the council?" Naomi asked in disbelief. "I mean, the answer's yes, I want to, but ask me next time, okay?"

"This is so cool!" Mateo squealed. "I can take up Alacazar's mantle! I HAVE to figure out how he did that magic painting spell. That could come in handy!"

Esteban cleared his throat. "If I may…"

"Oh, Esteban!" Luisa immediately seized him in a bone-crushing hug, and Francisco and Isabel piled on. "We're so glad to see you're safe!"

"You maybe wanna tell them WHY you're so safe and sound?" Armando urged.

"…Later," Esteban muttered. "It is just wonderful to see you all again." He put his arms around his long-lost family.

They stepped back, and Elena stepped toward him. "Wow," she said with a laugh. "You really changed."

"One could say I am finally older and wiser than you," Esteban teased.

"Older?" Elena retorted. "Definitely. But I don't know about wiser."

She put out a hand, and he gave it a tentative high-five. "I do not know if things can ever be the way they were between us," he admitted.

"Why not?" Elena asked. "You helped us take down Shuriki."

"There is…much you do not know," Esteban muttered. "But for now…let us just celebrate what we have won."

"You have to go save another kingdom now!" Isabel urged, shooing Elena away with a sweeping gesture. "Go on, go! But you have to come back!"

"No matter what," Elena promised, "I WILL come back. That's a promise."

Stork was about to chastise her for making a promise they couldn't guarantee to keep…but ultimately realized even he didn't find things so hopeless, standing where he was.

"Wait!" Sofia said. "I have one more question. What happened to Stormy?"

"The jaquins took him in right away," Gabe explained. "These three named Migs, Luna, and Skylar felt bad for him and just adopted him. And I feel like Migs had a kind of dad-like energy to him, so I think it's gonna work out."

"I have another question," said Naomi. "What was that vehicle you flew in on?"

Elena sighed. "We have no idea, and it's probably not gonna be explained anytime soon."

Outside the castle, Prisma's team had loaded back onto the crystal boat. "Well, we don't have a Shuriki problem anymore," Prisma said. "I'm a full-fledged Crystal Master, and the Delgados got the Eye of Midnight, so when the eclipse comes around, we can finally get rid of those pesky annoyances!"

"This may be where we part ways," Victor admitted. "There is still much work for Carla and I to do in this kingdom. If we can lure El Segundo aside, for instance, and get our revenge on him for our exile…"

"I'll miss you," Carla said sincerely.

"Not for long, you won't," said Prisma. "You have to come check in with me about those splints, remember? I would say around the time of the eclipse would be a good time to revisit it. Just come to the Mystic Isles! In fact, I'll send you a boat!"

"All is well that ends well!" Indus said proudly. "Except for the part where the heroes became twice as powerful as us and now can't be defeated unless we have an infinitely greater advantage!"

There was silence across the boat. Then Undertow slapped Indus hard with his tail; "NOBODY WAS GONNA BRING THAT ONE UP!"

At the end of it, they left the Delgados just outside town. The boat took off for the Mystic Isles, and the Delgados waved from down below.

"Sweet kid," the Lobster Mobster said. "Kinda reminds me of a kid I took under my claw once, but her heart's in the right place and his wasn't."

"You have adopted a human!" Indus declared.

"Yeah," the Lobster Mobster said. He shook his head. "I mean no. I ain't the parentin' type, see? I'm the takin'-over type!"

"Yeah, yeah," Undertow grumbled.

"Is anyone else still wondering why the hell Tepet Muul had those sky trams?" Mera asked.

"What I'm really wondering is how Yzma's doing with the Scepter of Night," Prisma mused.

"Maybe both of those things will be explained at once!" Indus suggested.

The boat winged its way toward the Mystic Isles, and it felt as though all really had ended well, at least for now.

...

"So are you trying to hack the m…ainframe or something? Careful…the Grandmaster doesn't like the M-word."

Rhona quickly uprighted herself. "I work here," she huffed.

"Sure you do," said the man. "That's absolutely why you were so afraid to be caught using this c…omputer."

Rhona took a moment to get a good look at the man. He was dressed in what seemed to be some sort of military uniform, but obviously he'd let it fall into disrepair, with wrinkles and stains and one button in the wrong slot. He was square-jawed, scruffy, and very sly-looking.

"Wait a minute," she realized. "You're not supposed to be here either!"

"Was wondering when you would figure that out," said the man.

"Well?" Rhona advanced on him. "What's YOUR objective here? Hmmm? Trying to hack the mainframe yourself? Because I'll tell you right now, that's not even a goal! It's a procedure TO a goal!"

"I just want what I can g…et." The man gave a shrug. "And you wanted your friends to win the big match."

"It's more than that," Rhona blurted. Then she reeled herself in, eyeing the man with suspicion. "Not that you have any business knowing. Who are you, anyway?"

"Not a Grandmaster stooge," said the man. "I know that was your f…irst question."

"I'll believe it when I see it," Rhona scoffed. "And I asked who you ARE, not who you're NOT."

"Right." The man nodded. "Name's DJ. Probably not the c…odebreaker you're looking for, but I still am in f…act a codebreaker."

"A codebreaker," Rhona muttered. "Hmm. I could use you on my current objective…provided you can be trusted."

"Use me?" DJ scoffed. "No, I think I'm the br…ains of the operation. If anything, I'll be using you, even when you th…ink you're using me."

"YOU? The brains?" Rhona laughed. "I'm the brains of ANY operation! I'm the Mad Thinker, Rhona Burchill!"

"I really hope you're right about me being t…rustworthy," said DJ, "because you just br…aged your name to me really loud. And I could use that if I wanted to."

Rhona furrowed her brow. "Unless I gave you an alias."

"You didn't."

"Is there a point to all this?" Rhona snapped. "Why are you taking such an interest in me? Wait…let me just make it very clear right now, you are NOT my type!"

DJ snickered. "No. Not that. Not in a m…illion millennia. I don't do e-girls."

"I'm not an e-girl," Rhona grumbled. "E-girls are frustratingly, garishly pastel."

"I only just learned the word yesterday," DJ admitted. "So I got it wr…ong. But whatever you are, I d…on't do it. No, I knew you were up to something when I saw you leave the Gr…andmaster's club, and I know you're up to s…omething now, and I'm bored enough that I want something, so if you have something, I want in on the s…omething."

"Literally that's it?" Rhona said in surprise. "You just saw I was sneaking around and you wanted to sneak around?"

"Yep."

"There's more to this story," Rhona accused.

DJ shrugged again. "Maybe. Maybe I came here after another mission that went upside-d…own. Maybe I survived by selling out my c…ohorts, taking the money, and running. Maybe I got lost. Maybe l…ost things come here for some reason. Maybe I always was lost. Maybe I wanted in with the Gr…andmaster, but that turned out to be a lot of n…othing doing. He just likes to shoot the breeze…freely. I'm not much of a f…reeshooter. I want something, not n…othing. So that's all I want. Something. What's your something?"

Rhona considered it. Could this man really be so bored as to want literally any part of a backstage scheme? Was it all a ploy? And hadn't he said –

"Didn't you say you sold out your last cohorts?"

"Got me," DJ said. "Guess you c…an't trust me. Too bad. Because I figured out the c…odes to the upstairs computers two weeks ago and that's where the good stuff is."

"You WHAT?" Rhona yelled. "Okay, that's it. I NEED your information. Give it to me!"

"I don't give it," DJ told her with a smirk. "I just give me. You get me and I use the info."

"Rrrgggh!" Rhona stamped several times on the floor. "Are you always this infuriating?"

"Yep."

"Fine," Rhona spat. "Fine! But this is all on a need-to-know basis. You don't know who else I work with…if I work with anyone else at all, that is. You don't know how I met Blizzard or Whiplash. You don't know WHY I want to know what it is I want to know. All you need to know is a list of information I'm looking to track down. That's IT."

"Works for me," DJ told her. "At least it's something. Which is all I wanted."

There was the sound of several feet storming toward their room. "The EMP came from this room!" someone yelled.

"Grandmaster's lapdogs." Rhona's lip curled. "So, Codebreaker, do you have a password to get us past THEM?"

"Yeah," DJ said. "It's 'Get Help.'"

"What?"

Thirty seconds later, DJ emerged from the terminal room with Rhona draped at his side, dragging her feet. "Hey, hey, hey," he told the security forces who'd just arrived. "It's n…ot what you think. The lady is sick. I'm just looking for help."

"Please get help," Rhona croaked.

The security forces lowered their weapons. "What happened to her?" one asked.

"Somebody threw her at a b…unch of guards," DJ answered.

Rhona nodded. Then, the part of the plan DJ hadn't necessarily spelled out suddenly became clear. "Wait, THREW HER – "

DJ hoisted her up into a bridal carry, lifted her over his head, and hurled her at the security force.

They weren't expecting to have a goth genius thrown at them, let alone one who knew martial arts. Rhona immediately went on the offensive the moment she landed. Those who weren't bowled over by the intial throw soon felt her high heels digging into their throats. When the lot of them were down and getting their bearings, Rhona spotted DJ at the end of the hall, waving her over fervently and mouthing "Go, go, go!"

She went, went, went. There was about a fifty percent chance this was a horrible idea. But that other fifty was mighty tempting.

...

First things first, the defenses around Nergal's Pizza had to come down. For this, Arius summoned Marx.

Marx, in monstrous form, needed only a moment to look over the scene. "I thought you would give me a challenge!" he laughed.

He retracted his wings, his body floating in midair nonetheless. Then a host of veiny pink tentacles burst from his body, surging toward the iron fence Nergal had summoned and pulling it all down into a twisted mess of metal. More tentacles pulled the drawbridge down to span the lava, and even more secured it in place and doubled its width so that it would be easy to walk across.

"That is maybe the most disturbing thing I've ever seen," Deymos said. "Which makes me real glad you're on our side."

Marx just let out a high-pitched giggle.

Together, Vexen, Deymos, Xerxes, Tsumugi, skekSil, Simon, Vincent, Albert, Victor, Agnus, and Arius strode across the bridge. Once all were inside the pizza place, Marx severed the tentacles – leaving the disembodied appendages in place – and flitted after his master.

The pizzeria interior had transformed entirely. Thick black flesh covered every wall, every floor, every surface. At random intervals, large, bulbous eyes opened up in that flesh and surveyed the intruders. They delivered the cue for dark tentacles to protrude up and whip out at the intruders, forcing them all to take a step back. The door to the kitchen was entirely webbed over with pulsating black flesh.

"No, now THIS is the most disturbing thing I've ever seen," Deymos sighed. "Twice in one day. That's gotta be a record."

The door was kicked in from behind, and four diminutive figures somersaulted into the hellscape of Nergal-flesh, forming a cheerleader's pyramid. "DID SOMEONE SAY 'NOODLE BURGER'?" Noodle Burger Boy asked from his position atop Crushroom, Hangry Panda, and Hyper-Potamus.

"No," Vexen seethed. "NO ONE said the words 'noodle burger'!"

"Great timing, though," said Deymos. "We could use a deus ex machina here. Please tell me you guys know how to turn this back into a normal restaurant."

"Crushroom is on the case!" Crushroom declared.

"Let's get this over with," Hangry Panda sighed.

"Come on, sisters!" Noodle Burger Boy encouraged. "Let's clear the way!"

Then all four robots stepped forward just enough to survey what exactly they were dealing with.

"…Nope," Noodle Burger Boy concluded. "Out of ideas."

"Yeah, this is too much for us," Hangry Panda grumbled.

"You promised us a Big Damn Hero moment," Tsumugi snapped. "And you can't even deliver a Big Damn Hero moment? …Well, Big Damn Villain, I suppose. But still!"

"What did you expect?" Hyper-Potamus asked. "We're fast food mascots! This is god stuff!"

Tsumugi sighed. "At least I don't have to be the Token Girl on the team anymore."

"Can't our new Summon just fix this like he did the outside?" Simon groaned.

"I was waiting for you to ask!" Marx chuckled. "It'll take the last of what I have before I have to recharge. So this is your one shot!"

"Do me proud," Arius commanded.

"Also, you guys are gonna wanna take a few steps back!" Marx giggled. "I would say wait outside the building!"

So they all filed out, crowding at the windows to watch what happened inside.

Marx positioned himself at the center of the pizzeria, then gave a high-pitched "EeeeEEEEEEEEEE!" and launched himself at the wall. Where he collided with it, he burned right through the Nergal-flesh, leaving a patch of bare wall and dropping several multicolored hexagons that normally made up Marx's wings. Then, like a pinball, he immediately ricocheted from wall to wall to wall, doing the same all over the restaurant, an unstoppable force of chaos shedding hexagons. If anyone else had been in the same building, he probably would have bowled them over. The entire affair was loud, not only from Marx thumping the walls at full speed but from his demented giggling.

Then, finally, when the last of the Nergal-flesh sizzled away, Marx evaporated in a brief spark of rainbow light. Arius stroked the Arcana Bastone; "He has returned. He will need time to recuperate. From here, we rely on the Helpsie, Argosax, and the lesser demons."

"Argosax is a LAST RESORT, okay?" Deymos urged. "Remember that."

Arius nodded. "I see no reason why I cannot win without ever drawing him."

Now the pizzeria was back to normal. The kitchen door was unblocked, and the elevator was in full view. "Looks like we're going down," Deymos said.

So everyone crammed inside the elevator. There were concerns as to if the whole team would fit, but when the Sisterhood of the Noodle Burger and Albert all ended up being hoisted into the air to form a second tier on top of the others, it worked out. Vexen was none too happy about being crowded in next to so many bodies, but he accepted this lesser evil in exchange for the greater evil that served as his greater good.

The elevator began to travel downward. Then the obligatory elevator music kicked in with a baritone "Ah-hah, ah-hah, ah-hah."

"Is this 'Da Da Da' by flipping TRIO?" Deymos yelled. "Actually, you know what? He's a dork and he's a dad. I don't know what I expected. Well, if you can't beat 'em…ich lieb' dich nicht du liebst mich nicht!"

The trip down into the center of the earth, of course, would regale them with such classic numbers as "Come On Eileen," "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?", and "Scatman."

Down below, Nergal Junior was trying to get his father's attention; "Dad? We forgot some – "

"No, we haven't," Nergal said. "I went over the checklist before we came down here."

"Yeah, but what about – " Todd attempted.

"Nothing we forgot," Nergal insisted.

"Honey – " Sis began.

"All under control," said Nergal.

They then entered the Pandaemonium castle only to find Kokichi lying on the floor with the Crypt of Failure board spread out before him, obviously in the midst of a very involved game. "Oh, hey, everyone!" he greeted slyly. "Just so you know, I'm killing at the Kokichi tournament. I thought I was gonna lose to Kokichi back in round one of the bracket, but wouldn't you know, I'm winning against my third Kokichi!"

Nergal Junior, Sis, and Todd all gestured to Kokichi. Nergal paused, then said a little too hurriedly, "I knew he was down here already. Yes. Definitely."

Xion hurried to kneel down by Kokichi. "There are enemies," she told him. "They're after us."

"Eh, just send 'em my way," Kokichi said. "I'll knock 'em out with a one-two punch!"

"Really?" Fred said, wide-eyed.

"No, dipshit," Kokichi replied. "That's your job."

"NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO BE DOING THE LYING THING!" Pietro yelled. "ANY MINUTE NOW, THOSE JERKS ARE GONNA COME DOWN HERE AND LAUNCH A SIEGE ON THE CASTLE!"

"Nonsense!" Nergal insisted. "The defenses in the restaurant are airtight. There is no possible way in all the planes of torment that anyone is – "

Sis tapped him on the shoulder, then directed his attention out the window.

Deymos was the first one out of the elevator, dancing wildly while belting "AAAAL-WAYS, I WANNA BE WITH YOU, AND MAKE BELIEVE WITH YOU, AND LIVE IN HARMONY, HARMONY – "

"STOP," Vincent snarled, practically pouncing on him like a predator.

"You do NOT get to tell him what to do!" Vexen barked. "I am the one in charge of this operation!"

"Academic seems strangely pleased with letting Nocturne sing silly songs on mission…" skekSil teased.

"It's merely too petty to waste energy on!" Vexen snapped.

"Oh," Nergal sighed. "And he appropriated our wedding song, too. Well, I suppose we have to do something about this."

"Don't worry," said Kokichi. "I got a plan. I'll save us all."

"NOT THE TIME!" both Pietro and Wanda yelled at him.

"I always wondered how the fuck you two were actually related," Kokichi admitted. "But now I see it."

Nergal turned to Xion. "Stay here – "

"I can't let you go alone," Xion urged.

"We have a veritable army," Nergal said. "They're after YOU."

"Let your mom and dad do their job, sweetie," Sis added.

"They couldn't even comprehend my true form, let alone beat it in a fight," Junior assured.

Xion shook her head. "No. I won't…I won't let anyone I love get hurt again. Not when I can stop it!"

She summoned the Keyblade without thinking, barging out the front door and leading the charge.

"HEY!" Pietro yelled. "WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF US?" He darted out after her, and everyone struggled to catch up with his super speed.

The two sides approached each other on the crystal-studded front lawn. On one side: Vexen, Deymos, Tsumugi, Xerxes, skekSil, Simon, Victor, Vincent, Albert, Arius, Agnus, Noodle Burger Boy, Hyper-Potamus, Hangry Panda, and Crushroom. On the other: Nergal, Sis, Xion, Kokichi, Nergal Junior, Fred, Todd, Wanda, Lance, and Pietro.

As the two sides faced down, Vexen pointed angrily; "RETURN XION TO ME THIS ONCE, AND I WILL SPARE YOU ALL SUFFERING!"

"Who's Xion?" Nergal replied. "I think you have the wrong house."

"No, wait." Xion's eyes widened. "I think…I think 'Xion' might be me. I think it was my name…before…"

(Someone calling that name out to her. Muffled, misty.)

"I thought it was Ninhursag," Nergal stated.

"That's the name you gave me," Xion reminded him.

"Ah, yes," Nergal recalled. "It was a good one."

"But 'Xion' sounds…right," Xion realized. "Xion is me. I'm Xion!"

"We love you no matter what your name is, honey!" Sis encouraged.

"I'm just glad she's not stuck with 'Ninny,'" Wanda groaned.

"I'm glad we have that settled," Vexen said through gritted teeth. "Now TURN HER OVER!"

"Mm…" Nergal pretended to think about it. "No."

"Then you've asked to do this the hard way," Vexen stated.

Weapons were drawn – shields, sitars, staves. Robotic cables were exposed, their owners threatening to double in size or shapeshift.

"Been a while since we had an old-fashioned beatdown!" Fred pounded a fist into his palm.

"I'm looking forward to kicking your sorry butts," Lance growled. "You messed with one of us!"

"Do you really think you can win this?" Nergal asked. "I'm the god of pestilence. I could very easily wipe you out with a plague that would admittedly take about a week to really kill you, but you'd be in agony for a a good one hundred and sixty-eight hours beforehand."

"You're also the biggest loser ever," Deymos pointed out. "You'd probably try to shoot plague at us and MISS."

"EVERYONE QUIET!" Kokichi walked out into No Man's Land between the two sides.

"What are you doing?" Wanda spat.

"I just wanna offer up a different solution to this," said Kokichi. "We could do an all-out battle. You'd kill some of our guys, we'd kill some of your guys, there'd be a lot of blood…it'd be really neat! But then we both end up with some of our guys dead, and nobody wants that. So how about we do a different kind of contest to see who gets her?"

There was a pause. "We're listening," said Deymos.

"Why are we listening?" Vexen hissed in his ear.

"Because if they snuff any of your replicas," Deymos hissed back, "we still don't know how resurrectable they are."

Vexen gave one single, sharp nod.

"I say we play a game," Kokichi suggested. "Winner takes Xion."

"I'm not a prize," Xion snapped.

"But if we take this deal," Vexen reminded her, "and you rescind, then your new friends WILL be the target of our aggression."

At first, she was speechless. Then, in a soft whisper: "Why do I know you?"

"I'm more 'family' to you than this band of misfits ever will be," Vexen snarled.

"Hold on," Nergal said. "Just to make sure there wasn't a miscommunication. Are you actually just trying to take her home to protect her from outside evils because she's your long-lost loved one?"

"She is my greatest creation," Vexen said. "An invaluable weapon. Something I cannot allow to escape again."

"Ah, so you're the one who's the bad parent," Nergal realized. "Glad we got that cleared up."

Xion nodded. "I'll…I'll do it. I'll hand myself over if you leave my family and friends alone. But if we win the game, you have to turn around and leave!"

"Fair enough," Vexen stated.

"How do we know you'll hold up your end of the deal?" Wanda seethed. "Don't think I forgot about who you are. You're probably the reason Ninhur – Xion can't remember anything. You TOOK those memories."

"Yes and no," Vexen replied. "The truth is far more complex than that. And if you wish to test how willing I am to betray the agreement, you may unleash your full power on all of us now. How powerful do you think each of us is?"

Wanda looked into each face. Agnus, Arius, and the cyborg trio in particular looked quite self-assured. They knew they had an advantage over even the Scarlet Witch.

"Fine," Wanda growled. "We'll play. But if you try and betray us, we won't let you leave unscathed."

"Listen to my scary sister," Pietro insisted. "She'll ruin your life. Believe it."

"What kind of game are we talking about?" Simon asked.

"My new personal favorite," said Kokichi. "Crypt of Failure."

"Dude, I love board games!" Fred whooped.

"How do we decide who plays?" Wanda asked.

"Actually, the game just so happens to have a twenty-six-player royale mode," Kokichi informed her, "and we've got twenty-five people right here. Last man standing decides what happens to Xion."

"You want to stake my finest replica ON A BOARD GAME?" Vexen yelled. "ARE YOU – "

Deymos held up a hand. "No. Take the deal. Trust me. I can make this work."

Vexen stared at him, flabbergasted. Then he seethed, "You had BETTER know what you're talking about."

"I do," Deymos told him. "Just follow my lead. Actually, for now, follow theirs."

"Let's adjourn to the game room," Kokichi said dramatically. "Where our fates will be decided!"

They moved inside the palace. Deymos discreetly brought out his scroll, tapping a message to a new party.

The board was still set up on the floor. "Here we are," Kokichi declared. "The battlefield of fate!"

"At LEAST move it to a tabletop!" Vexen screamed.

Deymos put up a hand. "Won't need that."

"Why not?" Vexen asked.

"Three," said Deymos. "Two…aaaaand – "

A giant party cracker appeared in the air. Its ends pulled apart – KABOOM! Down rained confetti, candy, and novelty rubber ducks in all colors. From the heart of the party cracker came a pair of familiar figures: one very tall, one very small.

Discord adjusted the party hat that sat before his horns, blowing a party horn with an obnoxious TOOOOOT. He then removed it between two fingers, like one might remove a cigarette from the mouth. "I heard we were playing BOARD GAMES!" Discord said excitedly.

As for the other, Commander Peepers simply shrieked "WHY AM I HERE? WHAT WAS THE POINT?"

"I wanted to bring my bestie to play games with me," Discord said flatly.

"YOU – " Peepers was about to go off again, but he found he couldn't. "Oh. That's actually really sweet. I can't really complain there."

"Hey, Discord!" Deymos greeted with a wave. "You remember that time you were talking about what you'd do if we started a WHAM ARMY D&D league? Which still isn't out of the cards, by the way."

"Oh, I know EXACTLY what you're asking." Discord spied the board on the floor. "Crypt of Failure! A classic! Why, I haven't played this since…since…OH."

He spotted Nergal, furrowing his brow. "No one told me YOU were involved."

"Ah, Discord," Nergal said. "Been a while."

There was an awkward silence before Tsumugi asked, "Are you two exes with a sordid past?"

"Actually, no," Nergal clarified. "I was actually more of a third wheel who tagged along while Discord was in a relationship with…HIM. I can hardly remember a time when I was more jealous."

"We don't speak of…HIM…again," Discord snarled. "That's the one where you'll find the sordid past. And after what he did to me, I'll never forgive him!"

"Who's…HIM?" Deymos asked. "And what'd he do?"

"I don't see how this is relevant," Vexen sighed.

"I've been saying His name the whole time," Discord clarified. "Haven't you been listening? As for what he did to end our relationship, it was the most unforgivable crime I can think of in all the multiverse. He violated me in ways I can never recover from."

"Are you saying he – " Tsumugi gasped.

"Borrowed my favorite book," Discord snarled in purest rage, "and LEFT IT OUT IN THE RAIN."

"Oh," said Tsumugi. "I thought that was going somewhere else."

"Why were you EXCITED for that?" Simon asked.

"Fanfiction has corrupted me," Tsumugi muttered sheepishly.

"Why, that…" Peepers was thrown into a similar rage. "How DARE he! Everyone knows that if there's one thing you never mess with, it's a man's favorite book that you borrowed! Borrowing implies a strict contract of return, and if the item is destroyed, then you have to compensate WITH INTEREST! But that shouldn't happen with a book anyway, because if you borrow a BOOK, you sign an implicit contract to GUARD THAT BOOK WITH LIFE AND LIMB!"

"You GET it!" Discord sighed with relief.

"So you've returned to turn my high-stakes match of Crypt of Failure into a show," Nergal said. "I can't say I'm surprised. Nor can I really say I'm disappointed. Admittedly it's going to be a lot more interesting this way. Though you will promise you won't rig the dice in your friends' favor, won't you?"

"Of course," said Discord. "Draconequus' honor."

Nergal glowered. "Why do you have a hand behind your back?"

"No, I don't."

"Are you crossing your fingers to nullify our agreement that you won't cheat?"

"Certainly not!" Discord said. "Am I not still your friend? After all, YOU never ruined any of my favorite books. Maybe I don't exactly like you anymore, but that doesn't mean I'm not your friend, and wouldn't you trust a friend to the ends of the earth?"

"I do need more friends," Nergal realized. "Why, yes! I will trust that you don't have your fingers crossed!"

(Discord had his fingers crossed.)

"Your life's kinda sad, yo," Todd sighed. "We survive this and you gotta learn some boundaries, dawg."

"I assume we're doing twenty-six-player royale?" Discord said. "Seeing as I count exactly twenty-five. Actually…is it in the rules that the last man standing speaks for the whole team?"

"Exactly," Vexen informed him.

Peepers knew where this was going. "THEN I'M IN! I'm somewhat of a savant at all strategy games. You don't know what you're up against! My victory is the WHAM ARMY victory!"

"All right!" Discord declared. "Here we go!"

He clapped his hands twice. A blinding light radiated from him outward to all Pandaemonium; none could see anything but white. When visibility returned, all twenty-six players were no longer in Pandaemonium at all, but rather standing on an enormous game board. The landscape of the board – illustrations of trees and buildings – had come to life as a landscape in between the tiled roads. Those tiles were multicolored squares, each printed with a different instruction. Each of the twenty-six people was on a different start square. At the center was an ominous and towering fortress surrounded by crashing storm clouds: the fabled Crypt of Failure itself.

"THIS IS HOW WE HAVE THE HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE?" Vexen yelled at Deymos, whose start square was several feet away.

"Is this not a home field that our team made?" Deymos yelled back.

Vexen couldn't argue, so he just turned away and folded his arms.

Discord appeared as an enormous hologram in the skies above the Crypt of Failure dimension. "Now, before we begin," he said, "is everyone familiar with the rules of Crypt of Failure?"

There was a chorus of "NO!"

"Well, it's really a very simple game," Discord explained. "At each player's start turn, you roll the dice to see how many squares you advance forward. Your goal is not to be sent to the Crypt of Failure, and there are several ways you'll have to avoid doing that…"

Exactly one hour later, he finally finished relating all the instructions for the game. "See?" he concluded. "Easy as pie!"

Vincent, Victor, and Albert had ended up on adjacent start squares, and exchanged looks of utter disbelief at this. "None of that made sense," Vincent growled.

"Regardless of whether or not you got all that," Discord said, "I'm not going to repeat it again, so off we go!"

A pair of giant dice appeared in the air, rotating at blinding speeds. The game was on.

For the first fifteen minutes, it was just normal play, with the twenty-six competitors gathering up resources and choosing their paths. The first great blow came when Crushroom announced, "CRUSHROOM KNOWS WHOSE NAME IS IN THE MURDER ENVELOPE!"

"Well, then!" Discord said so all could hear. "It's your turn, Crushroom! Why don't you tell us whodunnit?"

"It was Chamberlain in the Parlor with the Candlestick!" she announced proudly.

"Ooooh, I'm sorry," Discord told her. "That's incorrect. Looks like you'll be going to the Crypt of Failure!"

The square upon which Crushroom stood opened up like a hatch. She was plunged into a dark tunnel, where she slid first down, and then, inexplicably, up. She was finally deposited in a cell in the Crypt of Failure, surrounded by purely decorative coffins and plastic Halloween bones.

"My turn now?" Kokichi said. "I'd like to guess, myself. Because if Crushroom was wrong, then OBVIOUSLY it was Hangry Panda in the Cat Café with the Uzi!"

Three cards appeared high in the sky, depicting Hangry Panda, a cat café, and a machine gun. "COR-RECT!" Discord called out. "Sorry, Hangry Panda. Looks like you're going to the Crypt of Failure!"

"Aw, nuts," Hangry Panda said before the board opened up beneath her, sending her to a cell alongside Crushroom.

A few turns later, Lance advanced on Simon, landing on the same square as him. "My deepest condolences!" Lance yelled.

Simon found himself transported back to his start square. "NO FAIR!" he raged.

Hyper-Potamus then landed on the same square as Lance. "Now YOU go back to the start!" she declared.

"Oooh, I'm sorry," Discord said. "You have to say the words 'My deepest apologies' when you overtake someone. If you forget, well…you go to the Crypt of Failure."

Lance stepped out of the way just in time as the square opened up to send Hyper-Potamus to the Crypt.

"I'd like to use my Roleplay mode," Noodle Burger Boy said.

"Good choice!" Discord told him. "You're Lady Macbeth. What do you want to do?"

"Draw an action card!" Noodle Burger Boy announced.

The card was displayed in the sky for all to see. "Oooh, looks like you didn't distribute your Villain Roleplay Tokens evenly enough, and you left a clear shot for Macduff to kill you. Luckily, you won't die. You'll just go to the Crypt of Failure!"

"Aww, pickles!" Noodle Burger Boy folded his tiny arms petulantly as he was sent sliding.

Sis landed on a particular square, announcing, "I'd like to buy a hotel!"

"There's no way you have enough money for a hotel on Phlegethon Park!" Deymos chided.

Sis just pointed to the seven cottages she'd constructed there.

"HOW?" Deymos yelled. "WHEN?"

"It seems Sis is a shrewd real-estate agent," Discord said. "All right, very well."

The miniature village was replaced with a massive luxury resort that stood adjacent to Sis' square. "How do you like THOSE apples?" she crowed.

Agnus, unfortunately, rolled himself right onto that square on his next turn. "Rent's 70,000 munny," Sis demanded. "Now pay up!"

"B-but I don't have 70,000 m-m-munny!" Agnus sputtered.

"Really, Agnus?" Discord sighed overhead. "You're supposed to be helping this team. Unfortunately, because Sis' hotel rent bankrupted you completely, you'll have to check out a room at the…CRYPT OF FAILURE!"

Sis skittered out of the way as the hatch dropped from beneath Agnus.

Arius' turn was next. He landed on a square that read "DRAW COMMUNITY CARD."

"Deal my fate," Arius said ominously.

The card was projected on the heavens of the Crypt of Failure dimension. "Ouch," Discord said. "Go directly to the Crypt. Do not pass Commence, and do not collect 500 munny. I suppose those are the breaks."

"WHAT – " The hatch opened under Arius, sending him down with a scream of "NNNNOOOOOOOO!"

"Hey!" Fred called out on his next turn. "I think I got enough letters to spell somethin'!"

"Well, let's see what you have!" Discord said.

"Put this one on the Triple Word Score," Fred demanded. "M-I-N-I-T-U-R-E. Miniature!"

Discord made a noise like a buzzer. "That's not how you spell that!"

"It's not?" Fred said in disbelief.

"Let's just cut to the chase," Discord sighed. "Do you have an A tile or no?"

Fred rummaged in his ingame inventory. "Uh, no…"

"Then you just booked a trip to the Crypt of F-A-I-L-U-R-E!"

Fred was sent down the hatch.

Xerxes, luckily, was able to catch that Triple Word Score on "conscientious," and no one could explain how he even knew that word. He swam happily on for several squares until he came upon a chute attached to the square he'd landed on. There was a sign placed upon it, in Discord's handwriting, saying "NOT FOR WHAM ARMY!"

"Don't tell Xerxes what to do!" Xerxes hopped in the chute, which took him to a trap square marked "GO TO CRYPT." The hatch opened, and down he fell, despite his power of levitation.

"I could've sworn there wasn't a chute there," Nergal mused. "Discord, you didn't add it to the board, did you?"

"Of course not!" Discord laughed. "And I definitely didn't label it as bait, either! If I did, then obviously ONE OF MY TEAM WOULDN'T HAVE USED IT."

"Well, in that case, I'd like to loan 1,000 munny," Nergal said.

Todd found a ladder that put him in the center of the board's prime real estate, between Tartarus Towers and the Quadruple Letter Score. Discord couldn't have that, so he encouraged, "Todd, why not draw a Confection Card?"

"Yeah, why NOT draw a Confection Card?" Todd said to himself. "Gimme one!"

The card was broadcast for all to see. "Looks like he got himself sent to Candy Crypt!" Discord announced. "Which is the same place as the Crypt of Failure. Toodle-oo!"

"Wait a minute!" Todd realized. "You stacked the de – "

The floor gave way, and down he slid. He landed in the only cell in the Crypt of Failure that was made of gingerbread.

"Why, Victor Blake, you lucky dog!" Discord announced. "The Ghost of the Corpse has seen fit to bestow you with clue cards about the next murderer! Don't reveal your hand!"

Three cards appeared before Victor. "Ah," he said. "You're saying that the next murderer did it in the Laundry Room, with the Kusarigama, and was…" He did a double take. "Me?"

Discord paused. "I probably should've put someone else in the envelope, shouldn't I?"

"Yes, you should have," Victor growled as his square gave way.

"Victor Blake has gone to the Crypt of Failure," Discord said, "through a series of mishaps that had nothing to do with me rigging the game! Let's continue playing, shall we?"

Peepers requested a draw from a deck, and once he saw what he held, he was ecstatic. "Burglary card! BURGLARY CARD! I'm taking ALL of Wanda's vaccines, AND her firewood!"

"That means without the vaccine storage, Wanda will die of dysentery!" Discord announced.

"WHY DID YOU TAKE MY FIREWOOD?" Wanda yelled. "I WAS ALREADY DEAD WITHOUT IT!"

"Insult to injury," Peepers said proudly.

"And you know where people go when they're dead?" Discord posed. "THE CRYPT! OF! FAILUUUUUURE!"

Wanda soon found herself in a cell, steamed as could be.

"This is my card," Albert said, holding up a small piece of laminated paper.

"I didn't give you that," Discord said.

"It's my CARD," Albert insisted.

"Oh, RIGHT!" Discord projected the card on the sky. It seemed to have been written in blood and shaky handwriting. "This card states that anyone who's either got a blood relative playing the game or is named 'Vincent' has to give their entire hand to Albert permanently!"

"You just had to add that last clause," Vincent sighed.

"No rules in love or war, dear Vincent," Albert taunted.

Nergal, Sis, Junior, and Pietro all had to give up their cards also. Albert flicked through his hand, only to freeze, wide-eyed, when he read one particular card. "No…it can't be…"

Albert held up a card in a trembling hand.

"Don't tell me you set up that entire gambit just to end up with the Card of Failure!" Discord groaned. "Well. As it turns out, Albert just ended up with the Card of Failure in his hand, and since the card swap was permanent, Albert can never get rid of the Card of Failure. Which means it's impossible for him to win, and we all know where he's going: TO THE CRYPT! OF! FAILURE!"

"Serves you right, honestly," Vincent called over as Albert was dropped.

"The joke was on him!" Nergal crowed. "I ALWAYS end up with the Card of Failure without trying! Robbing my hand was never going to end well for him!"

At least Discord had the good grace to put Albert in Victor's cell. "It was a good strategy," Victor assured, putting a hand on Albert's shoulder.

"Hey, why do you guys get to be in the same cell?" Fred yelled; Discord had put Todd across the room from him.

"Home field advantage," Victor said.

"I should have gone with making everyone do a Shell Game minigame," Albert mused. "The problem is I'm out of eyeballs…"

Back on the board, the game continued. "I'm gonna play this one!" Lance held up a card of his own.

Discord projected it for all to see. "Everyone gets one card from the person who played this card!"

After the cards were shuffled, Discord pointed out, "Oh, Lance? How many cards are left in your hand now?"

"Just three," said Lance. Then he realized. "Oh no – wait – "

"You didn't say the magic word!" Discord taunted. "That means – "

"TRES!" Lance screamed. "TRES, TRES, TRES!"

"Too late," Discord told him. "You're going straight to the CRIPTA DE FALLA!"

After Lance was removed, Discord announced, "Vincent, you have a unique opportunity. You can use one of your Inhumanity cards – including the one Lance just gave you – to complete this sentence! Make me laugh, and you advance to the Prime Real Estate!"

Discord put up the prompt in the sky: "DISCORD, I'M HOWLING AT THE MOON AND SLEEPING IN THE MIDDLE OF _."

Vincent tossed a card upward. The sentence was completed: "A SUMMER AFTERNOON."

"You went with 'a summer afternoon,'" Discord sighed. "Which is entirely the correct lyric and not actually funny at all. I don't think you understood the assignment, Vincent. You HAVE the 'living in an actual nightmare' card IN YOUR HAND!"

"Was I not supposed to put the RIGHT ANSWER?" Vincent yelled in pure rage.

Discord sighed. "Complete the sentence, Vincent. You're going to the _."

Vincent gave an even more defeated sigh. "Crypt. Of. Failure."

The hatch opened, and he dropped. He turned up in the same cell as Victor and Albert, of course.

"It's not your fault," Albert said. "He didn't know you have no sense of humor."

"Yes, I do," Vincent replied. "When you ended up with the Card of Failure and couldn't discard it, THAT was the epitome of comedy."

"Was…I the only one that heard Discord somehow say a blank underline out loud?" Victor muttered.

SkekSil accidentally triggered a sing-off against Pietro. After Discord announced proudly that their word was "peachberry," skekSil was easily able to recall a host of Skeksis drinking songs that mentioned the fruit while Pietro had nothing.

"Nofairnofair!" he argued. "That'ssomethingthatonlyexistsonhisworld! YOU'RECHEATING – "
"ANDYOU'REGOINGTOTHECRYPTOFFAILURE!" Discord declared.

He decided to rub salt in the wound. Or, more accurately, peachberries, which Pietro landed in a pile of, effectively making jam that soaked his clothes.

"By the way, Chamberlain," Discord said, "you've just tripped an OCD diagnosis. How do you want to treat it? You have Potions, soma, and Red Queen in your drug deck."

"None of the above," skekSil sniffed. "Chamberlain chooses therapy instead."

The OCD card didn't disappear. It was replaced with three cards: a pink-irised eyeball, a drawing of Vincent, and a card with a "2" on it.

"WHAT IS THIS?" skekSil yelled.

"Homebrew therapy based on our resident therapist," Discord sighed. "You weren't supposed to ask for it. Looks like we'll have to check you into the Failure ward."

When skekSil arrived in the Crypt, he screeched at Albert, "THERAPIST TAMPERED WITH GAME MECHANIC!"

"I thought for sure Nergal would pick it," Albert said sheepishly. "Or Vincent."

"You realize we're on the same team," Vincent sighed.

"Yes, I do," Albert said. "But I wanted to have the last laugh on you, and also for you to see the new drawing I made of you, which the Chamberlain now has."

"Is very pretty drawing." SkekSil passed the card across the Crypt floor. "See?"

Vincent reached out and picked it up. "It…is a good drawing," he admitted.

"You made him look very handsome," Victor observed.

"CANYOUGUYSSHUTUP?" Pietro barked. "YeahyeahWEGETITyouguysgettoshareacell! But Lance is ALLTHEWAYOVERTHERE!"

"NO ONE UNDERSTANDS WHAT YOU ARE SAYING!" Arius screeched.

"HE SAID IT'S NOT FAIR THAT THOSE GUYS GET TO SHARE A CELL WHEN PIETRO AND I DON'T!" Lance yelled.

"OR ME AND TODD!" Fred yelled.

"OR ME AND FRED!" Todd chimed in.

"BUTMOSTLYMEANDLANCE!" Pietro yelled.

"Xerxes want to share cell with anybody," Xerxes pouted. "Xerxes lonely."

"It's Date Night for Xion!" Discord decided. "Set me up with the perfect man using your Romance Cards!"

"Um…" Xion put down her hand. "He's sensitive and empathetic. He's quirky and upbeat."

"Now, does someone want to add some Marinara Flags?" Discord asked.

"Oh, I do!" Deymos chucked two cards at Xion.

Xion read them: "But he also is an assassin…and can read your mind." She looked blankly at Deymos. "Those things aren't that bad."

"They're really not," Discord agreed. "Unfortunately…sensitive, empathetic, quirky, and upbeat? Gag me. Anyone who KNOWS me knows I want someone more uptight, short-fused, pragmatic, and…well, 'quirky' can stay. Red flags I could ignore include 'hung up on ex' and 'never stops nagging about chores.'"

"Which reminds me, Discord," Peepers called up. "It's STILL your turn to do the dishes, and I mean CLEAN THEM THIS TIME! You're almost as bad about leaving them around as Lord Hater was."

"We'll talk about it back home," Discord promised. "Anyway, Xion unfortunately has a date with the CRYPT OF YOU-KNOW-WHERE!"

The hatch opened, and down went Xion.

"I would like to intervene with a 'Somebody once told me' card," Junior piped up.

"Very well," said Discord. A door suddenly appeared beside Junior. "You kick down the door, and inside, you find…"

Junior kicked the door. It didn't move. He kicked it several more times, then employed several tentacles and an extraneous mouth to just destroy it.

An Eldritch Abomination roared at him from inside. "Oh, I see," Junior said. "Gimme a minute."

He entered the room with the indescribable entity of madness, shutting the door behind them both. There were some rather cartoonish punching noises, followed by a yipping reminiscent of a kicked dog. Then Junior exited, holding aloft his prize. "I beat it, so I got the Axe of Ennui!"

"But that was my hardest monster!" Discord complained. "Oh, well. I GUESS you get to use the Axe of Ennui on another player."

"Before I do, I'd like to engage my Roleplay Mode," Junior said. "My tokens should be distributed well enough to keep Armitage, Rice, and Morgan at bay."

"The Axe of Ennui while you're in Roleplay as Wilbur Whateley?" Discord said in disbelief. "That's a one-hit kill!"

"Simon." Junior pointed. "Hit Simon."

"YOU LITTLE BRAT!" Simon yelled. "IF THIS WERE APEX, I WOULD'VE HAD YOU WHEELED!"

"Sorry, but you're heading to the one place mildly worse than Dunwich," Discord said. "The Crypt of – You Know Which Crypt!"

Down went Simon.

"Oooh, I get to buy a house!" Kokichi said when he noticed his square. "Why don't you give me the Lizzie Borden B&B?"
"On which property?" Discord asked. "You're eligible for Halloween Hall or the Rainbow Factory!"

"Eh, put it on the Rainbow Factory," Kokichi decided. "I gotta get in touch with my roots with the hydraulic presses. Isn't that right, Tsumugi? Remember when you totally thought I survived that, but it was a lie the whole time?"

"THAT'S IT!" Tsumugi pulled over the bright-blue car token she was driving. "I'd like to trade in some of the kids I've stored up for a Sabotage Card!"

"Your children?" Discord gasped. "Are you SURE? But what about little Naruto, Sailor Moon, and Gurren Lagann?"

"In retrospect, naming my third son after a mecha wasn't the best idea anyway," Tsumugi realized. "But I'm willing to give them all up! Just give me a shot to TAKE HIM DOWN!"

The door opened, and three mannequins dressed in anime cosplay were sucked into the sky. "Here's your Sabotage Card!" Discord said. "Trade properties with the player that has the least expensive maintenance costs! Which would just so happen to be…the Lizzie Borden B&B!"

"HA!" Tsumugi pointed at Kokichi. "YOU now have to pay upkeep on the Gracey Manor while I get your quaint haunted murder site!"

"I so totally have enough munny for that," Kokichi said coolly.

"No, you don't," Discord told him. "It's a lie."

"I know," Kokichi said calmly.

"Well, you're not going to the Crypt of Failure, then," Discord said as the hatch dropped.

"YES!" Tsumugi danced happily in place. "WE ARE FIGHTING DREAMERS!"

"Look what square you landed on," Discord sighed.

So Tsumugi did, reading the text below her feet. "Buy Fursuit for Convention?" she gasped. "But those are expensive! I'll run out of all my munny!"

"And you just did," Discord sighed. "Have fun at Crypt-Con."

Tsumugi was dropped down the hatch next.

"It's like you're not even trying to work with the unfair advantages I'm giving you," Discord groaned. "Well, it seems we're now down to the elites."

Indeed, it was now Vexen, Deymos, and Peepers versus Nergal, Sis, and Junior.

"So I'm going to throw in a NEW GAME MECHANIC!" Discord announced. "You'll notice that several of the squares have lit up! See how bright they are?"

Every fifth square shone brightly as though illuminated from beneath.

"Land on one of those squares to trigger a MINIGAME!" Discord explained. "After all, if we're going to LIVE the game instead of just moving tokens, why not take it all the way?"

"I HEARTILY AGREE!" Nergal proclaimed.

"Dad, that's not in our favor," Junior sighed.

"Lemme guess," Sis snapped. "Every square we land on is gonna be a minigame. All anyone can roll is fives."

"I never said that!" Discord stated in the most guilty tone possible.

"Discord, does this NEED to be made any more ridiculous?" yelled Vexen.

"Excuse you," Discord chastised. "You made it to the end by playing no cards whatsoever. You haven't sabotaged a single person because of your conservative playstyle that I suppose is your way of saying you're too good for this sort of thing. I didn't come here to watch you stand around and not play games, you know! I came here to make sure you all PLAYED! And by the powers that be, Vexen, YOU'RE GOING TO PLAY THIS GAME AND YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE FUN DOING IT."

Vexen gave a long, low growl.

"That's the closest I'm going to get to enthusiasm, isn't it?" Discord realized. "Anyway, it's Junior's turn to roll!"

So he did. "A five," Junior said flatly. "How surprising."

The scenery changed, the colors of Crypt of Failure whisked away to put Junior on a dirt road. Behind him was a thicket of plants. Behind them were the other players, Junior's parents on one side and WHAM ARMY on the other.

"Mind the triffids!" Discord warned. "Ooh, look, they're hungry and they're coming after you!"

The plants started to crawl toward Junior, growing at a very rapid rate.

"Your job is to get to the finish line before the triffids catch up," Discord announced. "On your mark – "

"I'M GOING!" Junior took off running, cursing that his P.E. grades were so low. Still, the plants were very easy to outrun, and soon, he'd put some good distance between himself and the triffids.

"It's a VERY good thing these plants don't have any WATER to fuel them!" Discord announced.

Deymos knew right away what he meant. "POWER CHORD!" He struck the sitar's strings, and a tidal wave crashed down onto the triffids.

The plants reacted immediately, experiencing an even more extreme growth spurt. They shot down the road, immediately overtaking Junior, wrapping him up in their vines.

"HEEEEELP!" Junior cried as he was swallowed by the plant thicket.

"There's only one place you'll find help," Discord said mischievously.

"IS IT IN THE CRYPT OF FAILURE?" Junior screamed.

The next thing he knew, he was sitting in a cell in the Crypt of Failure, completely plant-free. "Knew it," Junior sighed.

The others had been returned to their prior positions. "Well, if it isn't the turn of my dear friend C-Peeps!" Discord announced. "What minigame are we playing today? I mean, um, how many spaces are you moving, of course?"

"Looks like five!" Peepers announced once the dice stopped rolling. He stomped on the space; "LET'S GO!"

He, Vexen, Deymos, Nergal, and Sis were brought to a lineup of carnival booths, all featuring the same game: a ball toss where the holes were labeled with different point values. The balls featured a starry-sky pattern, and the central hole of each board was situated on a drawing of an orange fuzzy alien.

"Carnival games, eh?" Peepers said. "Thankfully, the nonsense back on the Skullship made me very versed in – wait, is that Wander? DID YOU DRAW WANDER ON THE HIGH-SCORE HOLE? Oh, you just made this SO MUCH EASIER!"

"On your mark!" Discord said.

"I never consented to doing something this asinine!" Vexen yelled.

"GET SET!"

"I REFUSE to participate!" Vexen urged.

"Then come over to mine and be moral support!" Deymos groaned.

"I'll allow it," Discord said, making Vexen's machine disappear. "Now GO!"

Peepers threw balls like a maniac, screaming "TAKE THAT, WANDER! AND THAT AND THAT AND THAT!". The Wander drawing saw no mercy.

One machine over, Deymos was lobbing balls haphazardly, until Vexen started giving him instructions: "No, aim two inches higher – raise your arm like THIS – throw softer than that!"

And the balls started sinking into holes. "You DO know how to play this game," Deymos teased.

"I know basic physics," Vexen grumbled. "That is all."

Nergal was struggling immensely. Literally every ball he threw somehow ricocheted off the board back to hit him in the head. "Ow! Oof! Ouch!"

Peepers' throws went faster and faster, racking up a perfect score as Wander was pelted. All he saw was Wander and the red of rage. The moment a ball left his hand, another one was in it again, and –

"TIME!" Discord yelled.

"HA!" Peepers leapt up and down victoriously. "I WIN! TAKE THAT!"

"No, you didn't!" Nergal argued.

"DID YOU EVEN SEE MY THROWS?" Peepers yelled. He pointed to a scoreboard atop his machine; "DO YOU SEE THAT NUMBER? I JUST – "

Nergal pointed to the machine adjacent to him. The number was higher. The one who'd racked up the score – Sis herself – gave Peepers a smug smirk.

"BUT HOWWWWW?" Peepers whined.

"They call me 'Lightning-arm,'" Sis explained. "Coulda been a star softball pitcher if I didn't have softball so much. These days, I just use my talents winning stuffed animals at the fair for Nergal and Junior."

"Unfortunately, he who tripped the minigame must enter the Crypt of Failure if he does not win," Discord sighed. "Rats. Who wrote these rules, anyway? Oh, right, that was me because I assumed Nergal would be the one…"

Peepers' cell contained a plush canopy bed, an LCD television, and a mini-bar. "Well," Peepers sighed as he kicked back on the bed, "at least it's clear who the favorite is here."

"Oh, COME ON!" Lance yelled.

"And here we have the final four!" Discord announced as they appeared on the board. "Vexen! Deymos! Nergal! And Sis! Who will be the next to fall? Let's see those dice roll for SIS!"

"Oh, a five," Sis groaned. "Who could've possibly predicted that?"

The board was swapped out for a discotheque with a spinning ball that reflected prismatically into the dark surroundings. "You were quite the disco dancer back in your day, weren't you?" Discord taunted. "How about we see some of those famous moves? In fact, let's make it a couples contest! Our boring old married people versus…well, well, well, look who that leaves!"

"At this point I'm just resigned to my fate," Vexen sighed. "You lead."

"I was gonna anyway," Deymos told him. "But don't worry. I'll make us both look good."

The intro counted down. Sis and Deymos held out their hands; Nergal and Vexen took them. As the song kicked into high gear, it was soon a frenzied competition to see who could best spin their partner right round like a record.

Despite Deymos' best efforts, he soon realized that his talent was inferior to the sheer energy Sis and Nergal were putting off. It was absolute chemistry, even though they weren't actually that precise. And he knew far better than to ask Vexen to put in more effort – the man was doing the best he could, with bare-bones, stiff moves made out of duty.

"Okay, we gotta cheat," Deymos said. "I'm thinking if only we had some kind of tripping hazard."

Vexen smirked. "Say no more."

Nergal and Sis felt the floor slide out from beneath their feet as their half of the stage was suddenly coated in a sheet of smooth ice. Both landed on their backs, hitting hard on the floor.

"DISQUALIFIED!" Discord yelled.

"But they CHEATED!" Sis argued.

"They ALSO managed to stay up on the ice," Discord said. "See?"

Vexen had given himself and Deymos a floor of ice as well, and now he was utilizing his mastery over the element to skate himself and Deymos around the dancefloor, with Deymos adding all the necessary flair.

"Under equal circumstances, they performed and you flopped quite literally," Discord went on. "Now, I could send you both to the Crypt of Failure for this, but then I wouldn't get to use two of my minigames. So here's my offer. You two decide on ONE person to sacrifice and send to the Crypt. The other goes for gold. What'll it be?"

"Send me," Sis said immediately.

"Darling, no!" Nergal protested. "I can't win this without you! I'm terrible at this game and you know it! The reason I love playing it anyway is…" His eyes watered. "Getting to play with you."

"Honey…" Sis reached out, pulling him close. "It was me who messed up this last challenge. You've been getting a lot better at this game lately, and honestly, it's usually Junior who beats both of us. But I also know how much you wanted a win. You can do it, for Ninhursag. I mean Xion, I guess. Go show everyone what you're really made of."

"I CAN do it," Nergal realized. "Because you believe I can! Sis, my darling, my love…how I hate to sacrifice you this way."

"It's for the greater good," Sis told him. "Xion needs you. I don't trust myself to get to the end of this."

They both looked up to the ceiling, trying to pinpoint from where Discord's voice might be coming. "We've made our decision," Nergal said.

"Final answer?" Discord taunted. "Actually, I don't care. Sis, I think you'll find that the Crypt of Failure is where you won't be ah, ah, ah, ah, STAYIN' ALIVE!"

The hatch opened under her. As she dropped, she yelled, "WIN IT FOR XIOOOOON!"

Then landed in her cell, which was one over from Junior. "I thought you did pretty good, Mom," Junior said.

"Thanks, sweetie," Sis replied. "But it's all in your dad's hands now."

The other three returned to the board. The dice reappeared up in the sky, rolling and churning out –

"Well, whaddaya know!" Deymos laughed. "A five! You better hope I don't get a game that involves WATER!"

The scene changed to a watery expanse of ocean. Discord was now visible for the first time in a while, sitting behind the wheel of a motorboat. Vexen sat ready to pilot another. Nergal was given parasailer's gear and lashed to Discord's boat while Deymos was similarly tied to Vexen's.

"You're just enjoying making me look ridiculous now," Vexen told Discord.

"You can leave if you really hate it that much," Discord responded.

"You KNOW I can't leave without Xion," Vexen growled.

"Then I guess you're going to keep looking ridiculous!" Discord snorted.

"Pardon me," Nergal broke in, "but I'm starting to think that perhaps you're trying to sabotage me."

"Are you?" Discord replied. Then, after a pause: "THREETWOONEGO!"

He floored it, starting to drive the boat in circles. Nergal was lifted aloft, forced to whip around in a cyclone pattern because of Discord's driving. Meanwhile, Vexen accelerated his boat, heading toward a finish line marked by buoys. Deymos whooped as he was lifted into the air.

"THIS IS SO RAD!" Deymos yelled. "IT'S LIKE WE DON'T EVEN NEED TO CHEAT! BUT I'M GONNA ANYWAY!"

The boat sped up past where Vexen could've taken it. The ocean itself was helping, at Deymos' behest.

While they grew ever closer to the finish line, Nergal became far too dizzy at Discord's hands. His parasailing line was even starting to tangle around him, making him into a mummy with a parachute attached.

It wasn't even about winning the game anymore. He just had to get out of this sensory torment that Discord had locked him in. He wrapped several tentacles around his line, shooting electricity through them.

SNAP. The line broke. So did the connecting lines to Nergal's parachute, which had gotten tangled up in it. The wrapped-up Nergal, keeping the momentum of Discord's crazy driving, sailed through the air like a missile.

Discord pulled the boat to a halt as he realized where exactly Nergal's trajectory was taking him. "Oh, zribdenk."

Vexen was mere feet from the finish line when Nergal landed on him, causing him to jerk the steering wheel to the side. Nergal then bounced right out of the boat and over the buoy line. Nergal sputtered, spitting out water, before treading slowly; "I'm sorry, Xion. I can't believe I've failed you – "

"YOU STINKIN' WON!" Deymos screamed at him. "HOW DID YOU DO THAT? HOW DID YOU LITERALLY FAIL AT THIS SO BAD, YOU WON?"

"I won?" Nergal looked at the buoys around him. He then threw both fists into the air; "I WON!"

Discord sighed. "Well, THAT wasn't supposed to happen. Something something, obligatory water pun, Crypt of Failure, sorry Deymos."

Deymos landed on the water, and a personal whirlpool flushed him like a toilet.

Vexen and Nergal were returned to the board. "The FINAL SHOWDOWN!" Discord announced. "And have I got a special challenge for the two of you! Let's see what Nergal rolls…"

"A five?" Nergal did a double take. "What a coincidence!" (His statement, unlike those of Sis and Junior, wasn't in the least bit sarcastic.)

He and Vexen were transported to a great plain of snow, where winter winds whipped and bit their skin. "Your final challenge," Discord said. "SNOWBALL FIGHT!"

Vexen grinned, showing off all his teeth. "I must thank you for your excellent selection."

"I've come too far to let you beat me!" Nergal whipped up twenty giant snowballs, each held in a tentacle, and then grabbed one more in his clawed hands. "I will never, EVER let Xion go back to someone as HORRIBLE AS – "

Vexen casually summoned Frozen Pride and tapped it against the ground. The snow around him rose up into a tsunami that cast a shadow over Nergal's half of the field.

Nergal dropped every snowball he was holding; his limbs went limp. "Oh."

With a massive crash, he was buried. When the snow settled, there was a fairly Nergal-shaped lump of snow sticking out of the plain. Discord put in another cameo appearance, trotting on by in a jaunty coat and mittens so he could stick coal and a carrot into the face of the snow-Nergal.

"Want to tell me where you're going?" Discord asked.

"The C-c-c-c-c-crypt-t-t-t of – " Nergal sputtered from beneath the snow.

"I'm not waiting around all day for that." Discord waved a hand, and the snow-Nergal collapsed.

Nergal fell hard onto the floor of his Crypt cell. "Oh, come on now," he groaned. "You haven't even got the water-spraying skulls! I call inaccuracy!"

"I almost forgot!" Discord's voice echoed. Suddenly, a rather large stylized skull appeared in each cell. "Deymos, this is your cue to rock out."

"YEAH!" Deymos summoned his sitar, playing a complex riff. Everyone, friend or foe, was doused by water that surged from the skulls' jaws. Even Deymos himself, and he was in a celebratory enough mood to appreciate it.

"YOU JUST HAD TO!" Pietro yelled at Nergal.

"I do not appreciate this friendly fire!" Tsumugi snapped.

Vexen returned to the very center of the Crypt of Failure board, standing atop a raised podium. Discord appeared in the flesh once more, handing him a gaudy medallion on a blue ribbon. "And the winner of Crypt of Failure is none other than…VEXEN, FOR TEAM WHAM ARMY!"

"I…won," Vexen realized, eyes wide. Then he snapped out of it; "Of course I won! There was no one else fit to do it at all!"

Everyone was returned to Pandaemonium Castle. "You know what happens now," Discord said. "Xion gets turned over to us. Unless you want to fight about it."

"Awww, maaaaan!" Kokichi whined. He started to cry loudly, and no one was even sure if he was faking it this time. "I can't believe you losers!"

Xion shook her head, stepping back. "No. No, I won't go – "

Nergal and Sis stood out front of her. "Over our dead bodies," Sis snarled.

"As you wish," Arius said, raising the Arcana Bastone.

The great demon moth Noctpteran winged her way into view at his beckoning. She whipped her wings at Nergal and Sis, blowing them away with a harsh wind. Junior hurried after his parents, forgetting all about going full monster.

"NO!" Wanda threw all her magic at Noctpteran, and the moth was incinerated in a blaze of red. While she was distracted, Agnus went Angelo form, shooting a beam of violet energy that knocked her off her feet.

Lance and Fred ran for Xion. Pietro and Todd went for Wanda. All four were seized by spindly black Dream Eaters that pinned them to the ground.

Vexen nodded toward Kokichi. "I will always regret creating you. Stand down if you know what's good for you."

Kokichi's character broke, ever so slightly. He stepped back, muttering, "I just look out for myself anyway." Not very convincingly.

Now Vexen advanced toward Xion, who was on her own. "You should be happy," he told her. "You're finally coming back where you belong."

"You…you said you wouldn't hurt my friends," Xion replied through hitching breaths.

"That was before they got in the way attempting to protect you," Vexen said coldly. "Now come quietly. I'll have to reset your memory again from square one, but the good news is I have NEW friends awaiting you."

Xion's brow furrowed. "No," she said. "You…you broke your word. You're breaking it right now. I'm not going with you, because YOU HURT MY FRIENDS! I HATE YOUUUUU!"

As she screamed those words, a massive burst of bright light exploded from her as if she were a bomb. Once again, all was white. When it cleared, everyone was scattered around the Radiant Garden entry square, with the sky clear overhead.

"Why'd you take us here?" Peepers asked Discord.

"I…I didn't." Discord pointed upward, his claw shaking. "She did."

Peepers took one look and froze, chills running through his body. "Ohhhh…zribdenk."

There was a massive armored figure floating in the air, her red and black protective gear a perversion of Sora's everyday outfit. Her head was obscured by a great mask of red and black, with no facial features whatsoever to speak of. She had to be thirty feet tall at least. She looked to her bare hands, then threw them out to either side of her, calling upon the magic of Radiant Garden.

Behind the massive armored monster appeared four discs of radiant light, each inset with four prismatic stones at the cardinal directions. The stones glowed red, yellow, blue.

"She has MORTIPHASMS?" Vexen yelled. "Of course she has mortiphasms. She's drawing from Radiant Garden's heart!"

"Uh, Vex?" Deymos asked. "Just checking. That's…that's Xion up there?"

"Yes," Vexen answered.

"She's gonna kill us all now, isn't she?" Deymos asked.

"Or attempt to," Vexen said.

"You're sure about this?" Deymos' voice squeaked and cracked.

"Yes, I am," Vexen sighed. "After all…this is precisely what I designed her to do."

...

After traversing so many discs and levels of the Calix, Neo finally saw the light: an actual glimmering portal at the rim of the topmost disc. As the vanguard hurried up the ramp to that platform, Neo tugged on Emerald's arm, pointing.

"That better be what I think it is," Emerald said.

"It is," Symonne confirmed. "We're about to make our grand exeunt. Bow for the final curtain call, because this performance is our – "

They reached the top of the stairs. Despite their triple-cloaked invisibility, Heldalf was waiting for them.

"Remove the illusions," he demanded. "Now."

"HOW DID YOU – " Emerald sputtered.

"I am stronger than you give me credit for," Heldalf rumbled. "Now show me how many of you there truly are. I will know if you have left anyone out."

Neo and Symonne dropped their end of the illusion, save a couple choice details they agreed upon without even speaking. Emerald relinquished Heldalf's mind, since she never seemed to have had control of it anyway.

"Show me the kitten and the hunter," Heldalf commanded.

With a sigh, Neo and Symonne let the rest of the illusion drop. They'd hoped to conceal Cat and the Mukhtar as secret weapons, but obviously that wasn't going to work.

"Why have you chosen this path, Symonne?" Heldalf asked. "Have I not given you everything you ever wanted? After all your pain, all your suffering, I offered you a home."

"You offered me a way to take revenge," Symonne said. "Not a way to live my life. If we'd fulfilled our contract, I would be dead."

"That was what you wanted," Heldalf said.

"It's what I thought I wanted," Symonne corrected. "Not anymore."

"Symonne," Heldalf said – was he pleading? "All I have ever wanted was for you to flourish."

"That's a lie," Symonne said flatly. "You just said yourself that you knew I would perish. That was our agreed-upon goal."

Heldalf's face twitched. "All I wanted…you, your brother, your sister…I wanted to give you a home, a perfect world…you wanted the world gone, and I gave it to you…"

"Lunarre and Maltran?" Symonne said in surprise. "My BROTHER AND SISTER? Why would you use such endearing terms? It isn't as though we're any brood of yours."

"But you are," Heldalf insisted, his eyes seeming to glaze over as he reached back to try and find something lost in his disjointed mind. Something Braig hadn't given him back. "You were my children, my…everything."

"Where is this coming from?" Symonne asked. "That wasn't how it was between us at all. You would have agreed with me back then. Did your resurrection shatter your mind?"

"I…gave you the castle," Heldalf murmured. "I just wanted you to be happy. You and your brother ran, and I had never been so frightened. Then your sister…she was taken away from us…I thought she had left of her own volition, but she was stolen…"

"Where are you getting any of this?" Symonne urged. "Lunarre and myself running away? Maltran being kidnapped? You're inventing events that never took place. Something's wrong with you. It's almost as if…"

She didn't finish the sentence. Heldalf was zoned out completely, mumbling inaudibly, rifling through his memory.

"…I see," Symonne realized. "How interesting. This will certainly change the game. I wonder why anyone would go to the trouble."

"Is he just out of it?" Melanie asked, taking a few steps forward.

Heldalf snapped back to attention, holding forth a dark, jagged sword. "Go no further."

"And he's back," Melanie sighed.

Symonne took the lead. "If you wish to come to blows," she said, "then we will GLADLY meet you halfway."

"We will?" Emerald spat.

Neo nodded fervently.

"Okay, I guess I did sign up for this," Emerald sighed.

"If you proceed," Heldalf said, "then I will have to restrain you with violence. The Calix is safe for you. Leaving would be suicide."

"Says who?" Symonne scoffed.

Heldalf was silent a moment. Then his next words came in song: "Didn't I tell you…not to go out? Didn't I?"

Symonne hadn't expected the venom in his voice. For a moment, she was caught off guard, her fear showing; "You did, you did."

"Didn't I say the world was cruel?" Heldalf snarled. "Didn't I?"

"You did," Symonne agreed. "You did."

"Then tell me how this happened," Heldalf growled, "what I did wrong, tell me why! Can't we just stay right here and forget this dreadful fight?"
Symonne shook her head. "Didn't you say that you were different? Didn't you?"

"I am," Heldalf insisted. "I am."

"Say you aren't that person," Symonne challenged. "Say it."

"I am, I am!" Heldalf argued.

Symonne strutted back and forth before him; "Then tell me how to act now, what to say now, tell me why! All you've ever told me, every word…WAS A LIE!"

Heldalf had let himself get distracted by the song. As Symonne belted the high note, the Mukhtar finally finished sneaking up behind him, slapping magic-blocking manacles on his wrists to stem his malevolence. Heldalf faltered, falling to the ground – his malevolence was so much a part of him.

"Make haste!" the Mukhtar hissed.

Emerald, Neo, the Malachites, and Cat rushed after him toward the portal. But Symonne remained behind, looming over the fallen Heldalf. He looked up at her with wounded eyes.

"Come ON!" Emerald yelled.

"Not yet," Symonne seethed. She knelt down, seizing Heldalf's face in her hand. "Didn't you say you'd give me meaning? Didn't you?"

"I tried!" Heldalf sputtered. "I tried!"

"Is that how you'd help me?" Symonne snarled. "IS IT?"

"I TRIED!" Heldalf choked. "I TRIED!"

"Don't help me one more moment," Symonne growled, conjuring her staff in her other hand. "You're dead and gone in my eyes! Roman has replaced you, and I hate you! GO AND DIE!"

She slashed, leaving an X-shaped arte to burn across his face. With that parting shot, Symonne finally saw fit to get up and run after the others.

"That was so totally a risky game," Miltia told her.

The group burst through the portal, which closed behind them. Heldalf finally struggled out of the manacles, getting to his feet. "Roman?" he repeated. "Roman…"

He began to storm around the perimeter of the disc. "Didn't I build a castle, a home? Didn't I? I did, I did! Raised my children all alone! Didn't I? I did! I DID! But Roman took her from me, stole my Symonne, he's to blame! Have I failed my daughter? THEN LET THE FATHER DIE!"

Malevolence radiated from him in greater quantity than it ever had before. It poisoned the Calix, darkening the blue skies, seeping through into Glenwood's primary reality.

"AND LET THE MONSTER RIIIIIISE!" Heldalf screamed. Hellions of every shape, size, and variety rode the waves of malevolence across the Calix, ripping their way into the real world.

The vanguard, having rescued Symonne at last, found themselves outside a massive temple beneath crimson skies. "Where are we?" Emerald asked.

"Artorius' Throne," Symonne told her. "In Camlann, where it all began. Fitting."

"So, like, what will he do when he gets that mad?" Miltia asked.

"I couldn't say," Symonne replied. "He isn't the Heldalf I knew."

"As in he's just acting weird," Emerald asked, "or…"

"As in that isn't even him?" Melanie finished.

"Again, I couldn't say," Symonne said. "Something about him is incredibly out of character. Whoever gave him the script did a horrible job. That, however, is a secondary problem. Its pertinence is that I've no idea what he's capable of in this state, or how far he's willing to go."

"Then we shall have to prepare for anything," the Mukhtar decided.

The ground shook. The malevolence Heldalf had summoned tore through, making the whole world his domain. The Hellions clambered out of every crevice.

"Ah," Symonne said. "So that's how far."

The Mukhtar drew his blade. Emerald took up both hand-scythes. The Malachites struck a defensive pose. Cat reared back her jagged legs. Neo drew Hush, bracing the thin sword. Symonne raised her crystalline staff.

"We fight our way through," the Mukhtar decided. "ATTACK!"

...

Maltran and Lunarre did indeed manage to guide the entire party of Roman, Rose, Velvet, Molly, Laphicet, and Giovanni through the Lefay shrine. Roman commended them on their use of blind spots, and was sure that they would be experts at robbery, to which both had scoffed and said robbery was far below their pay grade.

At last, they reached the door to the uppermost, central chamber. "This is it," Roman said. "For the record, I have no idea what to fucking expect here."

"Molly," Laphicet suggested. "Let's protect everyone. Help me create a suppression field."

"Right!" Molly said. "We gotta be sneaky about this one."

The party was surrounded in a bubble of light. "How charming," Maltran sighed. "Now can we collect what we came for?"

Roman went ahead and pushed open the doors. Immediately, they spotted Mikleo, or at least what he'd become: a massive water serpent, coiled several times around the room. He seemed to be asleep at present, his dragonish head resting near the door.

"Mikleo?" Rose gasped. Thankfully, the suppression dome kept him from hearing.

Roman's eyes were elsewhere. Snatcher was across the room, standing by the far wall, looking quite sheepishly at Roman.

"Seriously?" Roman sighed to himself. "You freaked me out for this?" He waved, mouthing the words "Get over here!"

Snatcher paused, obviously quite anxious. Then shook his head: no.

"What do you mean, 'no'?" Roman hissed. He beckoned harder; "Get OVER here!"

After a tense pause, Snatcher mouthed, "Can't."

"Why the fuck not? Oh my gods – " Roman took it upon himself to march over to Snatcher's side of the room. Exiting the suppression field.

"BE CAREFUL!" Rose yelled, only realizing afterward that she was muted to Roman.

Roman, however, moved with the utmost caution, slowly stepping over Mikleo's coils until he was closer to Snatcher. Completely silently, he mouthed, "What gives?"

Snatcher was loath to respond, staring at him with a classic deer-in-headlights look.

So Roman marched over to him, seized his hand, and attempted to pull him along.

Snatcher hissed from the sharp pain that went through his other arm. Roman, thinking Snatcher had a grip on something for some reason, turned around to give him a lip-synced what-for.

Then he finally realized that Snatcher's other wrist led directly into the wall. And it all made sense.

"Oh…fuck."

Roman's verbal slip reached Mikleo's ears. The water serpent's eyes snapped open, and he raised his head, looking directly at the rest of the party in the suppression field.

"YOU IDIOT!" Maltran screamed.

"No more sense in this." Laphicet dispelled the field. "Everyone! Subdue him!"

"AND DON'T KILL HIM!" Giovanni screamed in Lunarre's face. "OR EAT HIM!"

Molly summoned Zaveid, Lailah, and Edna to her aid. For a moment, the three were distracted away from Mikleo by the other elephant in the room. "LADY MALTRAN!" Lailah gasped.

"And the fox guy?" Zaveid cocked his head at Lunarre.

"Oh, so it's a full deck of idiocy," Maltran sighed. "We can hash out old grievances later. For now, stop your so-called friend from devouring US!"

Mikleo roared. Weapons were drawn.

Roman wanted nothing to do with it. His only concern just then was setting his teleporter while keeping a firm grip on Snatcher's wrist. "Why the FUCK didn't you SAY ANYTHING – "

"You know very well why, Roman!" Snatcher growled back.

"Right," Roman sighed. "You didn't want to humiliate yourself. Except the ship sailed, and you could've been sea monster food, and FINALLY!" With the right coordinates in his teleporter, he slammed on the device.

Instantly, he and Snatcher reappeared in the atrium of the Lefay shrine. Well, with one caveat. Snatcher, being part of the wall, had managed to take a large chunk of that wall with him. The others upstairs had probably just been treated to a bigger battlefield. Down here, Snatcher stumbled, falling to the ground as he was pulled down by the weight of most of a stone wall that had been ripped from its foundations.

"At the very, VERY least," he growled as he lay atop the wall slab, "there's no one else to see this."

"Uh, wrong."

It was Yang's voice. Roman whirled to see that she, Harley, Elsa, Foulfellow, Gideon, Pinstripe, Tawna, and Karnage were all sitting on the tile, playing a great game of cards.

"Why the hell are you back?" Roman yelled. "You were supposed to wait by the wagon!"

"We kinda got sick of waiting it out in the little space between the shrine door and the waterfall," Harley said.

"WHY DID YOU HAVE TO WAIT THERE?" Roman yelled.

"You wanna tell 'em, ELSA?" Tawna grumbled.

To which Yang said "Uh, YOU wanna tell 'em, TAWNA?"

"It was my fault, okay!" Elsa blurted. "We were trying to leave, and then – "

As that particular subgroup left the shrine, before they walked back out through the water wall that hid its entrance, Tawna took one look at said waterfall and playfully punched Elsa in the arm. "Hey. What if you froze that thing and trapped us all in this little space? Would that be messed up or what?"

"What if I do?" Elsa repeated, starting to feel anxious. "Oh no, what if I do?"

"It's okay, Elsa!" Harley attempted. "Just breathe – "

It was too late. In a burst of panic, Elsa emitted a shockwave of cold. Exactly as Tawna had spelled out, the waterfall froze over, sealing them in the cavern.

After a short silence, Yang yelled, "WAY TO GO, TAWNA."

"No, I think this one was the Snow Queen's fault," Roman said flatly.

"THANK YOU," Tawna groaned.

"You tell 'em," Pinstripe said. "I had to put the fear into Blondie here for insultin' my girl!"

"You wanna show him what I did to your gun?" Yang said casually.

Pinstripe groaned, holding up his gun to show that the barrel was twisted in on itself like a pretzel. "This means nothin'. You caught me at a bad time!"

"Everyone!" Elsa barked. "It was my fault, okay? I froze the falls and now we have to wait for them to melt, or for Laphicet to come back down so we can blast out."

"Where is Laphi, anyway?" Harley asked. "And everyone else?"

The distinct sound of explosions sounded from above. There was a massive crash, probably the serpent smacking into the wall, and the faintest sound of Molly screaming "GIOVANNI, WATCH OUT!"

"Long story," Snatcher said quickly. "Doesn't involve you. You can leave. Go wait in the cavern. No need to do anything else."

"Are you trying to get us not to notice that your arm is fused to a giant wall?" Harley asked. "Because it's kinda hard to miss."

Snatcher just let out a feral, wordless growl.

"While you're all here acting the peanut gallery," Roman sighed, "any of you wanna help with this? Just…getting it to a more portable size. But don't break it down too small. I don't know how far the…hand molecules distributed in there and I don't wanna accidentally take out a finger."

"I mean, I can sure help." Yang leered as she stood up. "But I can't guarantee I'll be that precise."

"Sit the fuck down!" Roman told her. "Anyone but you, okay?"

And so, for the next few minutes, everyone took a turn trying to chip at the wall and make it more manageable. Foulfellow and Gideon attempted to use a mythril sword and Gideon's mallet as a hammer and chisel to cut the stone away, but this just ended with a slightly bent mythril sword. Pinstripe offered a lit bomb, which was quickly thrown into the central pool. Elsa forged a few different tools of ice, all of which broke against the thick stone. Eventually, the best anyone could do was prop the wall up against the actual wall of the atrium so Snatcher could at least stand upright.

"You are not to breathe a WORD of this when it's all over," Snatcher growled to the others. "In fact, you're not to breathe a word of it NOW. As far as you're concerned, THIS IS NOT HAPPENING. IT COULDN'T."

"Sounds like you got some ego issues," Harley pointed out. "Maybe we should – "

"MISS QUINN!" Snatcher barked. "WE HAVE SO FAR ENJOYED AN AMICABLE PARTNERSHIP. I WILL MAKE IT VERY UN-AMICABLE IF THIS PROCEEDS."

"…I think you guys wanna be alone," Harley said quickly. "C'mon, guys. Let's go back to the game."

"Gladly," Karnage said. "After all, I, the great Don Karnage, was winning."

"No you weren't," Yang told him as they all shuffled back toward the abandoned cards.

"Well, I was most certainly about to!" Karnage argued. "For all intensive purposes, I had a flushing hand very royally!"

"A royal flush, you say?" Foulfellow repeated. "Well, now we all know how to plan around it!"

"Perhaps I was saying a little too much," Karnage laughed nervously. "It could be a sporting lie, like a mountain with the jaggedy edges."

"A bluff?" Tawna said.

"YES, it was definitely the bluffing!" Karnage sputtered.

As everyone else settled back down and strategized how to bring Karnage down hard, Snatcher leaned against the wall that was holidng his hand captive. "Each time I think this particular endeavor can't possibly become any worse," he groaned. "I become the laughingstock of the aerial ballroom, I'm forced to relive the worst memory I wasn't aware I even harbored, I can't get a wink of sleep, and now THIS."

Roman leaned back on the wall alongside him. "Yeah, it's weird. Usually I'm the one getting chewed on by the universe."

"If you are attempting to console me with a tit-for-tat, Roman, you're making the opposite effect." Snatcher shook his head. "Un-amicable. I said 'un-amicable.' What's become of me? I should never have embarked on this journey of idiocy."

"Yeah, you really haven't contributed much," Roman said casually. "I mean, we did that whole scheme where we raided our own bags and got armed in the ballroom without you, and I managed to use my singing powers to get Symonne to sit down and listen to me all by myself, and – "

"I see what you're doing, Roman. Yes, I was present for all those moments, and many of them WERE my idea, thank you VERY much."

"So you know already that this would be a dumpster fire if you weren't here," Roman told him.

"The rubbish bin is already aflame now!" Snatcher insisted. "Here I thought I could do the simplest thing to prove my own worth, and not even THAT…not even that. What must they think of me? A foolish laughingstock?"

"No," Roman said decisively. "No, they don't. Impetuous and egotistical? Yeah, that for sure, but that's just the WHAM ARMY way. If they fault you for it, that's their problem. Me? I'm faulting you for scaring the ever-loving shit out of me. I know why you didn't say anything, but you should've SAID something when I called. You have any idea how much I was hand-wringing down here?"

They were silent for a moment. Punctuated only by Pinstripe yelling that he'd won the hand, and the distant sounds above of Giovanni calling out ridiculous anime-style attacks with ever-increasing names while Maltran and Zaveid argued over how to subdue a giant water serpent.

"You know what I definitely didn't do all on my own?" Roman sighed. "Shoot down that bird. The one Bear Trap is apparently friends with now. You did that."

"Yes, and ended up dangling from a precipice in the process."

"Okay, I can see not even admitting vulnerability isn't gonna work here," Roman realized. "So that leaves one thing."

"What?" Snatcher had turned away from him, not facing him.

"Look at me," Roman urged.

With a grunt, Snatcher obeyed, and Roman planted a quick kiss on his cheek.

"Are you – " Snatcher sighed. "Roman."

Roman hit the other cheek with his lips. "Mwah."

"This isn't actually convincing me of anything, Roman."

Now on the nose.

"This is an unfair play and you know it. You're fighting unfair."

Now on the lips, lingering and pressing deep. When they broke apart, Snatcher gave a sigh of defeat. "I'm not certain what you just did, but apparently it worked."

"How so?"

"In that I'm only all the more motivated to make up for these egregious slips."

"Just help me get Symonne back," Roman told him. "That's all I need here. That's the POINT."

"And it wouldn't do to leave her," Snatcher sighed. "Not sure what about this has me in such a state. Comparing her situation to my own."

"I think you're experiencing something called 'empathy.'"

"I don't much like it."

"No one does. It sucks."

Another pause. "I've likely disfigured myself for life, you know," Snatcher muttered.

"No, you haven't," Roman told him. "We have options. We have Yz-mom and her potions, Iceman can do some pretty amazing things…we'll get you back to normal. Don't even worry about that. And hey, if we don't, well, I can probably work up some kinks that only work if you have a chunk of stone for a hand."

"I doubt you can think of such a thing," Snatcher replied.

"You greatly underestimate me, darling," Roman said with a coy smile. Then, after a pause –

("HIT HIM NOW!" Velvet screamed from high above.)

"What do you say we jump from here right to the revenge mission?" Roman suggested. "Soon as we're wrapped here, we've got Symonne and everything, it's right to Jerktown to commit a multiple homicide on everyone wearing a white hat. Whaddaya think?"

"After this series of disasters…" Snatcher thought it over. "It sounds cathartic to say the least."

"Done and done. After this, we drop off the kids and we go right there. You and me. We'll do disguises and the whole bit."

"Disguises won't much work if my hand – "

"We'll FIX it," Roman insisted. "Unless you don't trust me."

A pause. "I would trust you with everything I ever had," Snatcher muttered.

"You know, I shouldn't say the same thing about you after that teleporter stunt," Roman teased, "but…yeah, I would."

"You should, you know. I wouldn't be half so irresponsible with – " Snatcher stopped himself when he realized what he'd said. "Not to say I was at all irresponsible. I did what I thought best – "

"I know what you mean, sweetheart."

(Up above, Giovanni very distinctly screamed out the notes of a victory theme he'd composed himself.)

"Hey," Roman said. "One more thing."

"What?"

Roman kissed Snatcher again, on the mouth once more.

"You've really got to stop that," Snatcher said once they parted. "You'll end up cajoling me into the worst of ideas if you keep pulling arguments that convincing."

"I will not use this power for good," Roman said.

Then the others – Molly, Laphicet, Zaveid, Edna, Lailah, Giovanni, Rose, Velvet, Maltran, Lunarre, and one extra – appeared in the central pool, having used one of the magic eyes to fast-track their journey downstairs. The new young man was dressed in a flowing tunic of blue with long coattails; his hair was silver and very fluffy-looking. His mouth was set in a pout, one that softened once Lailah hugged him from behind.

"We're so glad to have you back, Mikleo!" Lailah squealed.

"Couldn't do this without our buddy!" Zaveid ruffled the boy's hair.

"Welcome back, Meebo," said Edna.

"Really?" Mikleo sighed. "You're still calling me that?" Then he smiled softly. "I'm glad, actually. Just like old times."

"All right!" Rose yelled, pumping a fist. "The band's back together!"

"Oh, joy," Maltran sighed. She stalked off toward Roman and Snatcher; "Spare me the so-called good news."

"You're just lucky the little Shepherd boy is nowhere to be found," Lunarre snarled. "The new girl is…marginally more tolerable." He hopped off after Maltran.

Mikleo's face fell. "Sorey," he said somberly. "He's still…"

"Waiting for you, wherever he is," Rose told him. "You can bet on that. Your job is just to not die before he comes back from the big job."

"Well, well!" Maltran snickered as she approached Roman and Snatcher. "So this is why you were stranded apart from the troop."

"Do NOT," Snatcher warned.

"You probably want to be freed, don't you?" Lunarre teased. "I could just nibble away your wrist until it's separated – "

"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" Snatcher couldn't hide his panic.

"I'm only joking," Lunarre said with a wink. "Or am I?"

Velvet came up from behind, pushing them both aside. "I take it you want this cut down," she said, "but not too small, in case."

"Yeah, basically," Roman told her.

Velvet nodded. "Just remember. Two death bombs. You promised."

"Yeah, yeah," Roman sighed. "Just do the thing, will you?"

Velvet drew her claws, then sank them into the stone, carving away the rock with a series of grunts. Finally, at the end of it, Snatcher's wrist ended in a decently-sized sphere of stone that didn't feel heavy to carry but was definitely big enough to have contained a whole hand.

"Don't expect gratitude," Snatcher told her.

"I never do from you," Velvet said. "I do expect you not to say anything if I decide to remove the hat."

"Well, go on." Snatcher beckoned – with the stone orb. That would take getting used to. He still wasn't sure it could actually be fixed, despite all the reasonable methods Roman had mentioned to do so.

"Maybe later," Velvet said. "It suits me at this moment." She turned to stalk away.

"You know, you're all right," Roman called after her. "Unlike some people here I could mention."

"You suck too!" Yang called over.

Eventually, the troop (and they were numerous enough that Maltran labeling them as such was correct) left the shrine. Laphicet and Velvet blasted the ice wall; Dump Truck and Mad Dog greeted the group with many cheers once they arrived.

Just as it seemed all was going well, the monster rose. The sky darkened, and the world was clouded in malevolence that set the seraphs coughing.

"What the hell?" Yang cried. The feeling of saturated malevolence dredged up buried memories for her. Things she wanted to forget.

A Faunus in a mask.

The same was happening across the board. Roman and Snatcher were both on edge, Harley shuddered, Lunarre became surlier to hide that he was affected. Giovanni was sorrowful, and Molly seemed to empty out, drooping.

"What gives?" Rose asked. "What's with the sudden flood?"

Roman then heard his scroll beep. He retrieved it from his pocket. "Oh, hey. Bright spot. Neo apparently got Symonne out, and they're headed this way."

Yang rounded on him. "You realize what happened, right? Your right-hand girl took Symonne, and the bad guy got mad. Now look what we have to deal with!"

"Oh, and I suppose you think we should've left her in his hands?" Roman countered.

Yang took a step back. "No. That's not what I – "

"You know what? I'm done." Roman inhaled the concentrated malevolence, and it managed to convince him that perhaps he shouldn't actually "join them" anymore. "The girl's safe. I don't need you anymore. Go save the world. I'm out. I'm picking up my allies and leaving. Except, you know what?"

"Romy," Harley warned. "There's somethin' weird in the air. Stop talkin' a minute."

"No!" Roman snapped, storming toward Yang. "I'm not gonna stop talking until this bitch hears everything I have to say."

Yang drew back a fist. "You have no idea what you're asking for."

Roman moved quickly, like a cobra. He went in for the weak spot – seizing Yang's severed arm, above the elbow.

Yang froze, unable to deliver the blow. Adam Taurus's face rippled behind her eyelids.

"All you've done is blame me, humiliate me, insult me, and be a general ass to me," Roman growled. "But that's this mission alone, right? I don't have a reason to keep you around anymore, and my life would be SO much easier without you. Maybe this is where I finally say goodbye to you FOR GOOD."

"ROMY," Harley growled. "YOU LET HER GO OR I'LL – "

A roar split the skies. Heldalf had specifically wanted Roman punished. To that end, he'd sent his guard dog. Or, more accurately, his guard dragon.

Roman looked up. Big mistake. Xel'zed was diving directly toward him and Yang, the massive reptilian jaws opening, and Roman lost all bearing of where or even who he was, frozen and dreading that throat.

Then, the next thing he knew, he and Yang lay on the grass. The dragon was gone. Something had happened, obviously. He'd been knocked over. They both had. Someone had screamed – two people had screamed. Who they were and what they said, he couldn't have answered.

Slowly, he peeled himself off the ground, and Yang did the same. "What the – " he sputtered. "What the – "

"What happened?" Yang breathed.

Everyone gaped at the two of them, wide-eyed, jaws open. Then Rose yelled, "Roman, you son of a BITCH!"

"WHAT DID I DO?" Roman yelled back.

"THEY PUSHED YOU TWO OUT OF THE WAY BECAUSE YOU FROZE!" Rose screamed. "YOU GRABBED HER, YOU FROZE, AND THEY REACTED, AND IT TOOK HARLEY!"

Yang felt as though she'd been hit with a battering ram. "Wh…what?" She glowered toward Roman. "YOU."

She pushed him hard. He fell to the grass again. "IT TOOK HARLEY!" she screamed. "IT TOOK HARLEY BECAUSE YOU WERE TRYING TO KILL ME!"

"That is NOT how it happened," Roman breathed. "I couldn't have predicted that THING would – this isn't my fault, okay? You…I…" He was still struggling to erase the image of the open maw from his mind.

"Roman," Foulfellow said somberly. "She isn't the only one that the beast, erm…captured."

"The fuck do you mean?" Roman panted.

"Well, Miss Quinn dove in to push aside Miss Xiao Long," Foulfellow explained. "As any good…paramour would do. And, well, she wasn't the one who…shoved you aside…"

It hit home. Roman felt all the air leave his lungs, his body going cold. "No. Nooooo no no no."

He looked around the vicinity as quickly and thoroughly as he could. There was Rose, still angry as could be. There were Giovanni and Velvet, looking at him with two entirely different flavors of disappointment. But there wasn't one Archibald Snatcher.

"No," Roman repeated. "Not…no, I promised…he wasn't supposed to…he wasn't supposed to suffer anymore, it was supposed to go up from here, I…he…"

(But it was the truth. Because now Roman could hear both the screams perfectly in his mind: Harley yelling "I'LL COME BACK, I PROMISE" and Snatcher screaming "YOU PUT ME DOWN THIS INSTANT – ")

"You were SO focused on taking me down that you let HIM get taken!" Yang's eyes watered. "Is THAT the kind of revenge you wanted, Roman? IS IT?"

"I…" He was at a loss for words. It should have been an easy question. He always knew what he wanted. But this time, it was difficult to say.

"Why don't we make for civilization and bed down for the night?" Foulfellow suggested. "Things may look clearer in the morning after we've all experienced enough time and certainly enough distance."

Yang stormed toward the wagon. "WHAM ARMY stays in their lane. Don't you DARE get close to ours."

Roman looked to Giovanni, desperation in his eyes. "You. You're Mr. Sunshine around here. Say something."

"Say what?" Giovanni responded, his tone completely neutral.

"I don't know!" Roman urged. "Just…say something that fixes this. Say this wasn't my fault! Say how we're gonna win this!"

"I…I don't know how," Giovanni responded breathily. "And this…this was your fault. I'm sorry. We just…we gotta regroup, but…you should've just let it go. If you'd just let it go, then we…"

He shook his head and turned away, heading for his wagon.

Pinstripe and Tawna came over to guide Roman along to their own wagon. "We'll figure it out, got it?" Pinstripe assured.

"Yeah," Roman muttered. "We'll…we'll figure it out. Because it wasn't my fault. It…wasn't."